Bonita y deliciosa

 We're about halfway through the trip. We're polka-dotted - especially Aviva's legs and Noah's back.

  

We're well-fed, thanks to the mercados and restaurantes. We have happy bodies, thanks to the kids' swim classes and judo classes,  their rollerblading, and the tons of walking we all do. Sometimes even walking down the sidewalk is exercise. Also we have a soccer ball and last night the boy next door came over to play. Fernando is 11. And there are always trees to climb....

  

          

Our minds are working - the kids are doing a camp this week and took Spanish classes earlier. They're also doing a weekly theater class.

 

Saturday is the day for the weekly market at Abastos. At Abastos, you can buy a radio, a half-ton of cheetos, a baby bunny, fried grasshoppers of many flavors, cleats, athletic socks, many different kinds of mangos, other fruits we could not name, or an electric drill. It takes up several city blocks and is pretty intense. Here is a picture of a woman selling fruit, while her baby sleeps:

  

Josh made a scavenger hunt for the kids and it included a lot of random things. They got almost all of them, so they earned extra dessert and screen time. Some things on the list were a big pot, a kitten, someone with ribbons braided into her hair, a pile of baskets, a piece of cheese bigger than my head, dragon fruit, a string of sausages, someone throwing something, a machete. 

The floors of so many buildings are really lovely, with single tiles that are positioned so they make intricate designs:

   

Kids are climbing a lot of trees

We ride the bus and also many taxis (the kids are each allowed to decide we'll take a taxi twice each week) and shared taxis which are called collectivos. We took one on Saturday that was a regular sedan taxi and there were 7 of us in the car. Aviva on my lap, Noah and a stranger next to me, a woman in the passenger seat where Josh had been, which meant Josh was squished into the non-seat space. Then she got out and another person took her place. 

We went on Saturday to a marketplace/farmers market/mercado in San Agustin Etla, which is about a half hour's drive from Oaxaca. When we got close, the taxi driver asked someone where to go, and was pointed to a trailhead. We had to walk the rest of the way on foot, on the narrow dirt trail. The trail led us to a little area with 10 or 15 little tables. They were selling food and also some art and pottery. There were also some picnic tables to eat at, covered with tablecloths. We got a tamale, chilequiles, some fancy cookies, and a few other things, which were all served on real dishes. When people were done with their food, they put them next to a little sink area where someone washed them. There was a trail on the end of the mercado that led to a waterfall. A 40 foot waterfall. And the trail went on awhile and we were hiking around this waterfall, through the woods. Eucalyptus trees all around, so the name of this mercado is Mercado los Eucalyptus. 

  

  

Breaking news: the camp is cancelled. The kids went today and liked it but the counselors have to cancel it because there weren't enough kids.... So - guess we're going to a waterpark tomorrow

 

Nosotros recordamos esto! We remember this!

     We are in Oaxaca for the 3rd time, this time for 6 weeks instead of 4. We have a great (big) house next to a park we like, and we can easily walk to the center of town. The kids are taking a Spanish class for 3 hours/day and a Judo class 3 times a week. The kids love it here for many reasons: We sometimes leave the house at 8 pm to go to the park, we eat ice cream, popsicles, and pastries regularly, they can run around the house and use the huge bathtub in Aviva's room, and they each get their own rooms. There's a hammock and trampoline in the backyard, and we can choose between 3 different tables to sit for meals. And even though the streets are filled with dead cockroaches, we only saw one in our house, and only once.  Interesting wood floors, 5 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms, front yard and back yard - it's a lovely house. 

 This is the front gate of our house

 This is what you see when you walk out the door

 This is our back yard

 Living room, looking out at backyard

Outside our door (which has a huge metal gate) there are cobblestone streets with other homes and also restaurants and little shops. Aviva likes to walk on the sidewalk at home and avoid stepping on the cracks -- so she tries here to avoid the cracks but you can't really do that with cobblestones. We've been shopping at the little mercados, where you're asked to wash your hands and they take your temperature before you go in. You have to wear a mask. This morning we cut up papaya and mango to eat with our cereal, and the bananas are also really good. We eat a lot of rambutans and mangoes. Some days we eat 3 or 4 mangoes - I mean, they're cheap, we have tons of them, we all want another piece... Mangoes are not a rare commodity. 

It's been raining a lot - almost daily. Sometimes it rains really hard, which is nice to hear when we're inside. There are a lot of mosquitoes and we have lots of bites, especially the kids. We wear repelente contra mosquitos, or bug repellent, with deet, but we're still polka-dotted. Especially the kids. I'll show a picture. At Tlacalula Market this weekend we got a tennis racket thing that zaps bugs. Josh loves it. He does a lot of zapping. 

Noah has very strong feelings about a lot of things, and Aviva copies him so she also has strong feelings. In their Spanish class, they were making pinatas so they needed to bring candy to put inside them. Noah really wanted big things like whole snickers bars and a roll of mentos and a container of tictacs. Aviva wanted some really little candy hearts but she's not using them as candy. They are food for her stuffies and gas for her cars and flowers to pick in her little landscape she made on her bed. Noah's not eating his leftover candy either. Just sitting there. I'll add a picture of Aviva with her pinata. Noah was feeling mad at Josh the other night and put little slips of paper all over the house:

We've been walking around a lot, much to the kids' chagrin because they want to take taxis everywhere. Granted it costs $3 or less to take a taxi around town, but there's no reason they can't walk. I like to walk. I like to walk on cobblestones and see stuff in the streets and we're not walking that far. Anyway, we use Google maps or paper maps and it works well. The other day I was turned around and was having a hard time figuring out where we were. I had the paper map but wasn't sure which way was north. I asked someone on the street which way was north and he looked at the map and he thought about it and then he said with embarrassment that he forgot which way was north. And he was unfamiliar with the paper map. We laughed about it together and it was a nice little interaction. Also, both kids hold my hand or hold Josh's hand, and not because we ask them to. They like to, and I like that also. 

Mas por venir pronto.... (More to come soon....)