August 5, Thursday - Countdown to home

Only 2 more days here. I am already nervously packing. I can be a little compulsive sometimes.

I bought a suitcase with wheels on it today for all my stuff that I had bought in Mexico. I packed my pottery in my shirts and will hope none of it gets smashed on the way back home.

I will miss Oaxaca, of course, but I want to be home. I am a little tired of all the chaos and noise and stuff that "no sirve" - doesn't work. For instance, right now the upstairs toilet no sirve and I am going to have to go down and explain the situation to Gloria en espanol.

I just wish there was a happy medium between the colorful lively chaos here and the beige sterile functionality of Thousand Oaks.

I am reading a Richard Ford book, "The Ultimate Good Luck." It is set in Oaxaca and is a pretty terrible book, with a confusing plot and enervating language, but it does have one great, true line: "Mexico was like VietNam,or L.A., only more disappointing - a great trivial abundance of crap, the chief effect of which wasn’t variety, but sameness."

I thought that about summed it up. There is so MUCH here that it is hard to separate out what is truly decent from what is a mere mass-produced duplicate, and even some of the fine art here is so cheap that it is degraded by its pure cheapness.

Things I will miss:
Smell of chocolate
Bright-colored houses
Open-air businesses
Colonial architecture
Zocalo
Handcrafts
Mercados
Kind people
Families walking together
Kids holding hands
Speaking Spanish
Fiestas
Burros

Things I won’t miss
Smell of sewer
Quesillo cheese
Chapulines
Starving dogs
Beggars
Noise
Mosquitoes
Dangerous conditions
Being stared at
Men making rude noises
Firecrackers
Poverty
Fly-covered food
Horrible drivers
Lawlessness

I drank too much coffee and am feeling all jumpy and anxious. My room is hot at this time of night and the rain hasn't begun to give us any relief. Whine whine.

I found the fish part of the Mercado Benito Juarez today. It made me almost throw up, it smelled so horrible. I like the outdoor markets better, less claustrophobic and more lively, and the smells can dissipate better.