Last day in Oaxaca. I’ve been feeling rather sad. The city is overflowing with people and cars and dancers and music and excitement, which is making it feel like I’ll really miss out but also the city is starting to be unrecognisable. There are vast tents set up on some streets, and filled with stalls […]
A final outing
It turns out that my Instagrammer acquaintance is well known in Bangkok’s food scene. Last night she invited a few of us over to the place where she is staying for a Thai meal. So I went to the market for fruit, met up with Vida Loca (who arrived at our meetup point late and […]
The dance of the feather
At 9 I met the Instagrammer at the spot from where one can catch colectivos to Tlacolula’s Sunday market. It was a pleasant journey, quite chatty. I told hre about my limpia, she told me about her limpia, and with this early morning exchange of innermost secrets it was easy to get along. We arrived […]
What could have been
An unexpected successful, if short, excursion this evening. I went out to get dinner and had thought I would go to Llano park for the delicious elotes from the cart one has to queue for 20 minutes for. At the last minute, as I walked towards Porfirio Diaz, I changed my mind and decided to […]
Worst end of farmyard
It was the 14th birthday of my Spanish school and in the break there were two cakes. One, a tres leches cake, the other a jelly made with cream and with bits of regular green and red jelly suspended in it. It looked like something out of a 1950s American cookbook. Glad to have tried […]
Alone in Oaxaca
The following day my class was a little better and less discouraging. I did a spot of memorising, and have most of the prepositions somewhere in my brain if not always readily accessible. This was overshadowed by the GF’s departure as he left for his nearly-month long travels to New Zealand for a conference. The […]
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 […]
Second day off
Today we decided to stroll up to the aqueduct. This is outside the Centro Historico, but through a very lovely, quiet neighbourhood crisscrossed by canals, green and full of trees. We stopped for lunch at a superb little place with an outdoor garden overlooking one of the (dry) canals and ringed by old stone arches. […]
First day off
Saturday late morning. We left to explore the town and saw, as we passed the entrance, that the botanical garden was open. This is inside the walled grounds of old Dominican monastery and we had heard both that it is very good and that it has limited timings, so we went in. It turned out […]
Good grub
Work was frustrating yesterday as I somehow lost an entire day’s work: a document got corrupted and when it was revived all my edits had disappeared, despite having been saved many times. Anyhow, in the evening we went for our usual coffee to Bartolo (superb and lovely people), and then on for a stroll up […]