Living Abroad

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Top Cat Lives . . .

. . . in the suburb of Santa Rosa on the hill above Oaxaca near José’s brother’s house, where we were taking a walk and suddenly ran into the whole gang on the wall behind a restaurant.

IMG_0709 I can still sing the song: The indisputable leader of the gang, 
He’s the boss, he’s the pip, he’s the championship — 
He’s the most tip top
 Top Cat! (Now that I think about it, he was really a mafioso boss, wasn’t he? Or at the very least, a wise guy with his own gang of not-so-smart hoodlums like Benny the Ball). It only ran for one season in the 60’s when I was a kid, yet here’s Top Cat in Oaxaca: poetic justice since a cat in Mexico only has seven lives, not nine like in El Norte.

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Never Say No

The problem about asking directions in Mexico: people want to please you so much that they’ll say almost anything to avoid saying no, they don’t know. In fact, you pretty much just don’t say no here.

Heads or tails, eagle or sun

Heads or tails, eagle or sun

We norteamericanos see answering yes to save face and not to actual intent as a teeny stretch of the truth, just short of an out-and-out lie. The other side of the coin (which is not heads or tails but eagle or sun) is that when we – honestly, we think – give a straight-up no, it’s considered incredibly rude and brusque.

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Vino Indio for Whatever Ails You

Paco wasn’t expecting us, but then we never call first. Every branch of José’s extensive family tree is just pleasantly surprised whenever we show up, whenever that might be. Someone’s always home to answer the doorbell, which in Tío Julio’s case involves a rope running down the staircase from his second-story apartment that somehow opens the door on the street.

Orizaba

Orizaba

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They’re Rioting in Africa

There was this song by the Kingston Trio in the ’60s called The Merry Minuet that started with the lyrics: “They’re rioting in Africa; they’re starving in Spain. There are hurricanes in Florida; and Texas needs rain.”

So it’s summer in Oaxaca and once again (as they apparently do every year), the teacher unions are protesting and demanding change from the government.

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Not Pregnant, Just Embarrassed

Just yesterday, after nearly five years of speaking – or trying to speak – Spanish, I meant to say to my tour group that the restaurant owner was saving up to buy a big screen TV, a pantalla (also the word used to describe a lamp shade). Instead, I said she was saving up to buy arch supports, plantillas.

Pantalla

Pantalla

Plantilla

Plantilla

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Jesus Gets a Lab Coat

Jesus was wearing a white doctor’s coat with his name over the pocket, stethoscope draped around his tiny ceramic neck, carrying his own little black medical bag.P1060234

He was in good company, among a dozen or so other niños Dioses (literally God children), dressed in clothing from satin capes and regal crowns to simple robes and straw hats. They might have been cowboys or goatherders, but really, they were just pilgrims.

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The Far Side of Oaxaca

The parts that didn’t make the Christmas newsletter:

The Virgin of Guadalupe Festival, which rolled a street carnival, religious celebration and Christmas event all into one over-the-top happening. You could sing karaoke with Michael Jackson, get your picture taken with the Virgin and a donkey – but it was the Shrek Donkey (or with Santa Claus AND the Virgin), and eat a million kinds of fried junk food, ladled from huge vats of boiling oil that the throngs threatened to upend.

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