blog

Long day

Yesterday I had a second class with the new teacher and while she is very sweet and also very good, spoke to the owner of the school that I’d prefer to return to the old teacher. At the time she said yes certainly, though we will see what happens. I was then up late at […]

Slight disappointments

A couple of disappointments when I went in to Spanish today. For one, I had completely forgotten everything learned the previous week. More importantly (as I think it will come back to me), my teacher had been changed. The new one is very nice and capable, but somehow I didn’t quite click with her, and […]

To market

Sunday morning and we went to the market. This is the big Sunday market at Tlacolula, a small town about half and hour from Oaxaca. We took a colectivo with surprising success and arrived at around 11 when it was still relatively cool and there were few people around. It is a very large market, […]

Not quite enough

Though Saturday it was a working day today, though we went for a leisurely lunch. Sadness was largely kept at bay, though I felt slower and even quieter than usual. From experience I should be back to normal tomorrow. But today even yesterday’s diversion didn’t raise a smile and though I enjoyed a spoof video […]

Light relief

Fearing a difficult day, but there was something to cheer me up. Possibly fictitious, but the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province had a live stream on Facebook of a press conference to announce something or other, and apparently forgot to turn off the cat filter first. To think satire is banned in Pakistan.

Hamster wheel

A slightly overwhelming week. My classes are for three hours in the mornings, then it takes me about two hours to be finished with clearing the brain and having lunch, then work, work, work, which is falling behind. I will catch up this weekend but will have to consider how best to manage it all. […]

Back to school, redux

Woke early, had a leisurely breakfast and then walked the 2 minutes to my Spanish lesson. It is on the same street, conveniently close by, and is located in a small house overseen by a rather flustered but kindly woman and a handful of teachers. There were three other students at the school, luckily all […]

Last day off

Today, Sunday, was our last day off. Tomorrow we both return to work and my Spanish classes begin. We had a late start to the morning, lingering over tea and the news (for me) and exercise and calls home (for the GF). I was very pleased as last night, before realising that I was felled […]

Head case

The second day was less pleasant than the first. The first part of the walk was very easy indeed: first a steep walk down to the floor of the narrow valley with a small yellow silted river (I would call it a stream really) running down in, and then along the stream for about four […]

Cloud forests

Early in the morning we were collected and taken up into the Sierra Norte for the first of our two days of walking. This was arranged by a community project, one of the oldest in Mexico, and very impressive. It’s a collective of several villages that runs an eco-tourism initiative with obligatory community service for […]