Ruins, Ruins, and More Ruins: My Weekend in Oaxaca

So this past weekend my roommate Leo asked me if I wanted to go home with him for the weekend. He lives in the state of Oaxaca. Just in case you’re geographically illiterate like myself (I still have no idea how to read a map), Oaxaca is located about 4 hours south of Puebla where the University of the Americas is located. At first I was a bit hesitant because I had kind of made plans with the other international students to do stuff over the weekend. But I figured that I would probably have tons of boring weekends to hang out with them. I mean how often was I going to be able to stay with a Mexican family. So I told Leo that of course I’d love to go.

After my classes were done on Friday, I quickly packed because Leo said we would be leaving at 1.30p. Of course, I should have realized that this was 1.30 Mexican time, which really meant more like 3p. At about 3.30 we finally made it to the bus station. It was really busy and kind of like an airport. They frisked me and used a metal detector wand on my backpack before I boarded the bus. It made me feel safe, but at the same time it was slightly scary to think that they would need to take precautions like this. The bus ride was 4 hours long! I brought homework with. After about 10 minutes of reading short stories by the Mexican author Juan Rulfo for my Mexican literature class, I gave up. I watched just watched the movie that was playing on the bus, which was The Little Mermaid in Spanish…Yep, this was indeed real life.

By the time Leo’s mom picked us up from the bus station, it was about 8.30p. I was really tired and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. Leo had other plans though. He decided to take me on a two and half hour walking tour of Oaxaca! It was a really pretty city, kind of artsy and bohemian. It really reminded me a lot of the place I stayed at in Chile this summer. There were lot of gringos there, a term Latin Americans use to refer to people from North America, Europe, and Australia. We went down a street with bars and nightclubs that looked pretty awesome. My roommate’s not really into partying, so we just walked past those.

Before we took a colectivo, a cab you share with a bunch of people, back to Leo’s house in the suburbs, he bought me this Mexican hot chocolate stuff made out of corn and chocolate and an empanada. I had had empanadas in Chile and they were fried and doughy. Mexican empanadas were basically just quesadillas with a little bit of sauce added.

At like 11p we made it back to Leo’s. His house was pretty typical for the area. He lived across the street from a convenience store. There was a cement façade in front of his house that led to a carport. In his front yard, his family raised chickens, had a lime tree, and kept a pet parrot that they brought inside at night. I was rather taken aback by this because I had never seen anyone really do this before. Inside his house, there was a large nativity scene still set up from Christmas. It was filled with several baby Jesus statues/dolls, a random assortment of Wisemen, and other decorative odds and ends. If you know a thing or two about art, then you might have referred to it as kitsch. If you’re art-phobic, you might have called it tacky. Leo gave me his room to sleep in while he slept on the living room floor. I felt a little awkward about this, but he insisted.

The next morning, Leo’s mom made us homemade quesdillas for breakfast. His dad then dropped us off at a youth hostel downtown from where we took a bus to the ancient ruins at Monte Albán where the ancient culture of the Zapotecs lived. There were pyramids, fortresses, and lots of staircases to climb. Looking at everything was really cool. It was especially interesting because Leo is an archaeology major, so he knew everything about everything at this site. His inner geek definitely came out that day. After we finished looking at the ruins, Leo took me back to all the sites we had gone to the night before so that I could see them in the daylight.

Monte Alabán

We went to a bunch of churches, heaps of them. The highlight of that visit was probably getting to see the photography studio of Manuel Álvarez Bravo, who is this really famous Mexican photographer. I had learned about him last semester in a Latin American art class I had taken. He was famous for taking pictures of Mexican intellectuals, artists, and other famous people in the 30s and 40s. It was really intense just being able to see the space in which he actually worked.

"Portrait of Frida Kahlo" (1931) by Manuel Álvarez Bravo

After that grand adventure, we returned to Leo’s house. Leo had come home that weekend because it was his sister’s 18^th birthday and they were having a family party, which of course I was obligated to go to. Family parties are usually awkward. This one was especially bad because I didn’t know anyone there and everyone spoke Spanish. I tried making conversation with some people sitting at my table, but I ended up making a fool of myself. Oh well…C’est la vie. Anyway, it was an eye opening experience. At least now I know how much work I have to do with my conversational Spanish.

After surviving that horrendous experience, Leo took me to another set of ruins in Mitla the next morning. The ruins at Mitla were smaller and had been built by another ancient culture whose name escapes me at the moment (sorry, Leo told me about so many things about Mexican history this weekend that I had trouble remembering all of it). After the ruins, we went to see this tree located at a nearby church that was 2,000 years old and supposedly the widest tree in the world. We had some transportation issues getting there and back. The bus broke down on the way there and apparently didn’t go the other way back home. We had to take a taxi and another bus before finally getting back to Leo’s house.

I finally got back to UDLAP at 2am. I was really tired and had class the next day at 9a. I could barely stay awake in class on Monday, but it was seriously worth it. I was so glad I went!