Why Mexico? Why Oaxaca?
Note: the easiest way to read this whole blog is to go and click this May 2005 link. It will take a bit to load, then you can easily just scroll down through the whole thing. If you have a spare 10 hours or so.
A quick note: if I sound like a cranky, clueless gringo, well, these posts were mostly written at the end of long days of hard study and being lost and confused. Like so many travel adventures, the fondness and good memories come AFTER the fact...In reality, I loved Oaxaca and highly recommend it as a destination. It is a magic place.
In April 2004, I started thinking -- obsessing, really -- about studying Spanish in Mexico.
Living in California and being monolingual sort of stinks. I knew I could have a lot more fun if I spoke Spanish.
After a miserable 3 years of junior high school French classes with Mr. Pampalon, I had started to study Spanish about 20 years ago at Cal Poly with my one required quarter (9 whole weeks!) of a foreign language.
After that, I took a class every few years, but my progress was slow and I kept learning the same things over and over.
My need to learn Spanish became more urgent when I went to work writing for a newspaper. I would go out on story assignments and run into people who only spoke Spanish. It drove me crazy to not be able to converse with them.
After much thought and discussion with people who had been to Mexico, I decided to go to Oaxaca.
I'm not a big traveler. Having been a low-paid wage slave with 10 days off a year, I have never had the time or money to go very far or for very long. But thanks to my beneficient sweetie, I was finally able to plan a 3-week trip out of the country.
Oaxaca is both a city and a state in southern Mexico - the capital of the state named Oaxaca is Oaxaca. Kinda like New York, New York.
The city has good weather in the summer, when most parts of Mexico are very hot. It is at about 4500 feet in elevation, in a valley between two mountain ranges.
The other thing that attracted me to Oaxaca is that it had an airport. I was too chicken to go to the Mexico City airport alone and then have to find bus transportation across Mexico by myself, relying on my bad Spanish.
I found a small language school Espanol Interactivo, that could make housing arrangements for me to stay with a Oaxacan family. I wanted the full immersion experience.
Here is how I did the research to find the school: I looked at a great website called 123 Teach Me . They have ratings for Spanish and French schools all over the world. Espanol Interactivo wasn't the highest-rated or the cheapest, but it had a website that looked very sweet, so I went with them. See how scientific and rational I can be?
I sent an email to Sra. Luz at Espanol Interactivo and the deed was done - I was signed up for three weeks of Spanish classes, six hours a day.
This is what happened on my first trip out of the country at age 43.
A quick note: if I sound like a cranky, clueless gringo, well, these posts were mostly written at the end of long days of hard study and being lost and confused. Like so many travel adventures, the fondness and good memories come AFTER the fact...In reality, I loved Oaxaca and highly recommend it as a destination. It is a magic place.
In April 2004, I started thinking -- obsessing, really -- about studying Spanish in Mexico.
Living in California and being monolingual sort of stinks. I knew I could have a lot more fun if I spoke Spanish.
After a miserable 3 years of junior high school French classes with Mr. Pampalon, I had started to study Spanish about 20 years ago at Cal Poly with my one required quarter (9 whole weeks!) of a foreign language.
After that, I took a class every few years, but my progress was slow and I kept learning the same things over and over.
My need to learn Spanish became more urgent when I went to work writing for a newspaper. I would go out on story assignments and run into people who only spoke Spanish. It drove me crazy to not be able to converse with them.
After much thought and discussion with people who had been to Mexico, I decided to go to Oaxaca.
I'm not a big traveler. Having been a low-paid wage slave with 10 days off a year, I have never had the time or money to go very far or for very long. But thanks to my beneficient sweetie, I was finally able to plan a 3-week trip out of the country.
Oaxaca is both a city and a state in southern Mexico - the capital of the state named Oaxaca is Oaxaca. Kinda like New York, New York.
The city has good weather in the summer, when most parts of Mexico are very hot. It is at about 4500 feet in elevation, in a valley between two mountain ranges.
The other thing that attracted me to Oaxaca is that it had an airport. I was too chicken to go to the Mexico City airport alone and then have to find bus transportation across Mexico by myself, relying on my bad Spanish.
I found a small language school Espanol Interactivo, that could make housing arrangements for me to stay with a Oaxacan family. I wanted the full immersion experience.
Here is how I did the research to find the school: I looked at a great website called 123 Teach Me . They have ratings for Spanish and French schools all over the world. Espanol Interactivo wasn't the highest-rated or the cheapest, but it had a website that looked very sweet, so I went with them. See how scientific and rational I can be?
I sent an email to Sra. Luz at Espanol Interactivo and the deed was done - I was signed up for three weeks of Spanish classes, six hours a day.
This is what happened on my first trip out of the country at age 43.
posted by Suebob at 5:24 PM
5 Comments:
Except, of course, that New York, New York is not the capital of New York,
Good God, EFL...you have the soul of a copy editor. I didn't mean it was the capital of NY, I just meant the two names are the same...
lol. I had a great time reading your blog (yes, i actually read all of it).
I'm mexican, but haven't been to Oaxaca. I've lived in Yucatan, Puebla, Mexico, and i've been to other places, but never to Oaxaca. I live in Miami ATM, but I must say i do preffer the mexican chaos to the USA dullnes (hey, no offense intended).
I just love cheese (and quesillo too XD) but i guess you can get tired of it. Its a shame you did not ate chapulines (they kinda taste like roasted peanut skins, at least the little ones) and with lime juice they're great.
I know mexico is not perfect in sooo many ways, and there's lot of poverty (i wonder if thats how you spell it), but the relaxed people and food makes up for it, i think.
Next time you come to mexico, try goingo to a bigger city, like Puebla (lots of Bars and Discotheques, Great nightlife) or Merida if you like the archeological stuff and regional dances. That would make for a totally different experience. Actually Merida is very tourist-like and lots of people "talk" english there (at least they try) and you can even find one or two all english libraries.
Anyways, I hope you had a great time in your trip, and believe me, even if your spanish have not improved as much as you would have liked, just by understanding it better you have come a great way.
I love that picture. That would look lovely in my (future) mansion. I could look at that everyday.
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