Marriage Counseling

Mr. T had another tour guide with him when he met us in the morning and her name was Miss Soo (maybe, she was very soft spoken) and she was in ao dai, traditional Vietnamese dress for women. These are very long tunic style silk tops, almost floor length, of brilliant fabrics with slits up the sides to just about the mid ribcage. These are worn with loose fitting, slim slacks and were the norm through the late 20^th century but are less popular now. Mr. T said that, in the past, when the children rode their bicycles to school wearing ao dai, it looked like butterflies flapping in the wind.

Together Mr. T and Miss Soo took us outside of Hue for the morning. On the road, Mr. T explained that the divorce rate in the south and the north was very high but in the central highlands it was very low, only 1%. He commenced in giving Chris advice about how to stay married a long, long time and it went something like this: when Sandra gets very angry that you have been out with many women, instead of arguing about it when there is much heat, walk outside and stay away for many days until no one is angry anymore and then come back and all will be fine. Somehow, that’s how they maintain low divorce rates in Hue. He keeps telling us that the Vietnamese don’t look back; maybe this is one example of that,  but I do look back so Chris can keep walking if he has been out with many women. Or even just one. I can use that several days he’s walking around to pack his things.

We visited a morning market at Thuy Thanh village and I realized for the first time on this trip that I hadn’t seen any Vietnamese men at the markets we’ve been to. The vendors are all female and the buyers, as well. Miss Soo said this is because the markets are for people preparing family meals and men do not do that work in Vietnam. This town is also home to the Thanh Toan bridge, a Japanese ^th Century which replaced an earlier monkey bridge and served to connect the rice fields to the town and which is a terrific break from the sunshine, as well. At the bridge, Miss Soo talked through the process of harvesting rice which is done by hand in this part of the country.

styled, ornate foot bridge from the 18

Our next stop was a family garden where we had a cooking lesson and learned (kind of, but not really) how to make the Hue cakes banh beo and banh loc, but Hue cakes are not like… cake. The first was a rice paste spread on a banana leaf and then spread again with a mixture of shrimp and pork puree, then folded into an envelope and steamed. The second was a tapioca paste spread on a banana leaf and then a piece of pork fat and a whole shrimp was added before it was folded into an envelope and steamed. Don’t worry about taking the shell off the shrimp, you hardly notice the shell is on there once it’s steamed if you’ve been eating this particular dish your whole life. If you’ve only eaten it once, then you kind of notice. The man who taught us was taciturn with a wizened face and it was hilarious to watch him watch Chris get rice paste everywhere and eventually he was belly

laughing at the mess Chris made of his cake. His operation is just like the FoodNetwork in that as soon as we had rolled several of each kind of cake relatively successfully, that plate was whisked away and a fresh plate returned with just cooked cakes that had clearly been steaming while we worked.

After lunch, we drove a bit and then stopped at Anh He Café, where the artist-owner has collected memorabilia from the Vietnam War and has repurposed it as furniture in his café. As we sat and sipped our coffee, Mr. T pointed out the difference between Russian and American fuel tanks and talked about which canteens and radios he had used during the war. He says “we” when he refers to himself and the American soldiers and that

is telling about his experience.

 From there we walked a short way to the Tu Hieu Pagoda, built in a pine forest in the mid-19^th Century and known as the resting place of the Nguyen Dynasty’s Eunichs. It is a peaceful, quiet, beautiful place and at its entrance is a large reservoir because there is great reverence for water here; in fact, many Vietnamese people have some symbolic lake in their gardens for this reason. The pagoda counts among its students the famous Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and is currently home to 70 monks, who were singing their mid-day prayers when we were there. It was a holy sound and we were lucky to be there to experience it.

We parted ways with Miss Soo and Mr. T brought us to the Imperial Citadel, where, mostly, photos are not allowed (ugh). It was built in 1804 in accordance with the principles of geomancy and faces east. It is a massive walled fortress surrounded by a moat that is fed through two sluices by the Perfume River. The Imperial City is within the fortress walls and also the Purple Forbidden City, to which access was restricted by all but the Nguyen imperial family. There is a pool in which 400 concubines would have been swimming in the mid-19^th Century and there is a temple with worship alters to all of the kings of the Nguyen dynasty, which lasted from 1802 to 1945. This temple is a long two story corridor of red and gold that reminded me of a Vietnamese Hall of Mirrors for its opulence and scale. The worship altars here are fashioned similarly to the ones in people’s homes: there are two candles, a vessel of water, food as an offering and incense, always incense. This is the best smelling country in the world for all of the incense. These tables are to keep the ancestors close to the living. We visited the throne room and plaza, where the armies would present in formation for audiences with the king and the library, as well. Another World Heritage Site, Unesco is working to preserve what buildings remain and recreate the ones that sustained damage or were destroyed by termites, cyclones and war. Unfortunately, the Citadel was attacked by the North Vietnamese Army as part of the Tet Offensive and the artillery fire damage is clear.  I wish I could use words in a way to do more justice to this place.

It was time for our flight to Hanoi and when Mr. T brought us to the airport it was hard to say goodbye. I will long remember his words and his eyes and his intense life story. 

Our itinerary for our full day in Hoi An said “easy day” and we had this single day in the middle of our trip to do as we pleased and talk to each other and experience quiet. Everything about this trip has been amazing, but it hasn’t been easy. For an introvert to be (trapped) in a car with strangers all day, have dinner every night with people who feel the need to articulate every thought and to have one’s time taken from sun up until sun down is exhausting. I’m trying to hold at bay my idiosyncrasies while we are here but here they are magnified and I realize how rigid I am about how I do things at home. This trip isn’t long enough for me to believe that it will necessarily change my behaviors at home, but I will at least be more aware of the fact that there are so many other ways to do things and life continues apace.

We spent our day wandering in the Hoi An markets by the river and ducking in and out of shops. We found what may have been some terrific political propaganda prints but the woman in the store refused to translate for us what they said, I can only assume because she didn’t want to offend us. It’s hard to explain the purpose of my trip to people who only speak a little English so she couldn’t have known we were looking for something that just might be offensive.

As much as people ask if I have children, people talk to Chris about his facial hair and in the market a tiny woman ran up to him and said she would be happy to give him a shave. She said he would look 10 years younger. We didn’t take her up on that magic trick but it has become clear that his goatee isn’t the norm here and we haven’t seen a single Asian man with any sort of facial hair. I am comforted to learn that when my nail women at home comment on my eyebrows it is a cultural comment because women in the market ran up to me with thread in hand offering to do my whole face. We’re both trying not to let any of this affect our relatively healthy self esteem. One thing happened the other day that I hope to never forget and when something like this happens it’s hard to not be happy despite the obvious implications: two little girls saw Chris and I walking down the street and squealed in delight, first jumping up and down and then running up to us and kissing our big stomachs. So dear and also so different from home where children don’t approach strangers.

It’s possible to have a dress made from scratch in the market here. There are big dress books that one can look through, pick a style and then there is a wall of fabric to choose from; another woman told me she could make me a pair of leather shoes to fit my feet while I waited. Too late I realized I

probably should have taken her up on this offer, but we moved on.

We were able, finally, to choose our own food for lunch and had bahn my—Vietnamese sandwiches, and it was nice for us to have a simple lunch-sized meal. We walked up and down the riverfront and in and out of alleyways for the rest of the afternoon and it was good to meander.

Our new tour guide for the area surrounding Hue was Mr. T and he met us at 8 a.m. in the lobby of our hotel. I’m honoring his privacy and not using his name in these posts. Originally, when he saw me taking notes he said that was fine as long as I didn’t work for a newspaper. Later, he asked that I not use his name in any publication of any sort because “people still watch” and he could get in trouble with the Communist Party. Mr. T served as a combat interpreter for the United States Army in 1967 when he was 17 years old. He worked in the Hue region and served the 101^st Airborne Division—the Screaming Eagles—until 1972. When Chris asked him how he was treated after the war, he said simply “I am still alive.” He struggled to find work after the war and carried bags of rice for many years to raise his children, all of whom went to school. Now he is 66 years old which he says is very, very old. He has many stories, some heartbreaking and some heartwarming and on this leg of our journey I think Chris and I would be happy to just sit and listen to him and forego seeing any sites because his telling of his own experience is captivating.

That said, he did bring us by small boat to another UnescoWorld Heritage site: the ancient city of Hoi An, an island village called Kim Bong.  About 150 people live on this tiny island and carve wood. It was named a heritage site in 1999 and that has had both positive and negative results. Unesco gave the village $4000 to boost their economy and create wood carving collectives. Before this happened few people had jobs and now everyone does so that is a good thing. The flipside of being an “ancient village” is that the people are not allowed to renovate their homes and perhaps the word renovate suggests some HGTV project that is not what these people have in mind. In order to repair any damage their homes sustained from flooding, for instance, they must get approval of the government in order to do so. It’s kind of like living in a FLW home in Oak Park and wanting a fancier kitchen than you’re allowed to have except that these people are cooking over fire pits so not JUST like that. The boat trip back and forth from the village was eye opening. We saw ferries on which people were loaded with their motorbikes and also boats full of chickens and other products being carried back and forth. Almost all of the buildings here have shrines right outside the door, including businesses, and Mr. T says that is an area in which the spirits of the dead can stay close to the living and that most homes also have a worship table indoors at which ancestors are honored. Incense is lit everywhere in honor of the dead here.

We left Hoi An and traveled by car up the Central Coast along the South China Sea to the Danang province. I have to say in print that I never in my life thought I would be anywhere near the South China Sea. Dana Delaney fans who were watching soaps in the late 80s will know this area from the American television show China Beach and now I know this area from having actually visited China Beach. It is breathtakingly beautiful, with the Marble Mountains on one side and the sparkling blue sea on the other, and as a result it is being built up now as a resort community. Airplane hangars are still present and empty, which is extremely unusual but have been kept for the possibility of future use. They are surrounded now by golf courses, casinos and resorts and Malaysians, South Koreans and Japanese people vacation here with increasing frequency in addition to it being a disembarkment port for cruise ships. We were lucky to see China Beach from two vantage points, from sea level and from high above. We continued up the coastal road to a pagoda on Monkey Mountain, from which ^th of June according to the lunar calendar and that is a prayer day, many, many people were on their hands and knees, foreheads kissing the stone in front of them to honor the Buddha. The plaza in front of the temple looks down to China Beach from above and it is equally stunning from both points.

towered a 67 meter tall statue of the female Buddha. This is visible from far afield and reminded us of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer (which we’ll have to go and visit next, I guess, to compare). This is the tallest Bodhisattva of Mercy statue in Vietnam and inside a different Buddha is worshiped on each of its 17 stories. The interior was, unfortunately, closed while we were there but we did enter the Linhh Ung-Bai But Pagoda and because it was the 13

There is very much industry and construction in Da Nang and Mr. T believes that in 20 years it will look like Hong Kong. There are buildings going up everywhere so it’s easy to imagine a neon lit city here soon, but, at the same time, there are rows of men six deep standing at what looks like 45 degree angles from the sand hauling in fishing nets by hand. We crossed the famous Dragon Bridge of Da Nang, which I had seen in pictures the last time I had my nails done because my manicurist is from Da Nang. We were there during the day, but at night, the head of the dragon at the end of the bridge breathes fire. Da Nang currently has a population of 1 million people and is growing faster than Hanoi and Saigon. We stopped for lunch there and had My Quang—chicken and noodles.

We continued along to the Hai Van Pass, where we climbed up to what remains of a French bunker just above what remains of an American bunker and from which it feels like you can see the whole coast line and all of the South China Sea. Before we arrived here, many people asked how we thought we would be received because of the war. Now I think that question was asked through the lens of imperialism, by citizens of a super power. It is hard for us to understand what it must be like to live in a country that has had so little autonomy for so long. Also, Chris and I knew next to nothing about the history of this place and now know that the Vietnamese—if they looked back, which Mr. T says they do not—have many people to resent: the Chinese who were here for a thousand years and with whom there is still tension at the northern border, the French who were here for 100 years, the Japanese who were here for only 18 months but in that time 2 million Vietnamese starved to death. The 1954 Geneva Accords separated Vietnam into two countries: North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh Diem, divided at the 17^th Parallel. A bridge between the two new countries remained open for 100 days so the Vietnamese people could decide in which country they wanted to live. Mr. T keeps reminding us it was a civil war before we arrived and that we arrived to help the South Vietnamese army protect their country and their democracy from the North Vietnamese Army and it was a civil war after we left.

Mr. T sometimes talks about the war and sometimes talks about what things are like today. For the last 20 years, Vietnam has been the number one exporter of rice in the world and is the second exporter of cashews and coffee (behind Brazil). Their other big industry is rubber and Vietnam is the third highest producer of latex in the world.

We drove past the former site of Camp Campbell, where it not possible to walk because the United Nations is still looking for landmines there, and made one last stop for the day at the site of Camp Eagle, in use from 1968 until 1972 and then abandoned. It was occupied by the 1^st Cavalry Division, the 3^rd Brigade of the 82^nd Airborne and 101^st Airborne Division. This is where Mr. T served during the war. Nothing is left, it is a quiet place and the land is now used as a cemetery which seems fitting as he stands and looks in the distance and says “here, friends died in my arms.” Each of our tour guides has had a rich personality in different ways and I’m sure there’s a work of fiction in my future about them intersecting in some way, but I’m so glad we have this time with Mr. T. He has been witness to so much and it is a gift that he is willing to share what he has seen with us. 

If you like that kind of thing

We met Owen and his friend for breakfast at the restaurant across the street from the hotel where we stayed the night and had traditional Vietnamese steak and eggs. In this cooking process, the cast iron dishes are baked to an extreme temperature and then the eggs and steak and vegetables are added to the dish and it all cooks on the table in front of you. It was very good and Chris had Vietnamese coffee with it, something that also cooks at the table.

He was served something that looked like an individual percolator and he said the coffee was very strong. Iced coffee is popular here, too, and is made using the same process although the coffee drips into a glass that has already been coated with condensed milk and then ice is added.

We drove through the small city of Duc Pho and Owen said you can tell when a city has grown up over an American base because the streets are perfectly straight and the roads are very good. Owen had given us a bit of choice about how we wanted to spend our day and outlined for us several possibilities, including visiting the My Son ruins “if you like that sort of thing.” Owen prides himself on his tours being off the beaten path, which we have appreciated until this point, but we wouldn’t skip a Unesco World Heritage site just because it’s listed in guide books and others will also be there.

The only rule was to stay on the path because this is an area where there could still be landmines, and we hired a Vietnamese guide, Duyen, to walk us through the Sanctuary and tell us about the ruins. Her English was very good; she had studied at university in Saigon and said she liked to speak it very much. The ruins were discovered in modern times by French archaeologists and are located in the ^th and 13^th centuries are striking against a jungle backdrop. While all that remains today is a small ethnic minority group, the Champa were Indian Hindus that settled in the region: a valley surrounded by a ring of mountains, including the Holy Mountain. Under this Hindu influence, temples were built to Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna. These tower temples are what is left of the My Son Civilization. There

were 70 monuments in(relative)tact before World War II, the Indochina Wars and the Vietnam War but bombing in this area reduced this number to 20. As one walks the site, bomb craters are clear in the landscape. There has been a concerted conservation effort, as well as reconstruction that has been supported by the Polish and French governments, among others. Duyen was able to show us different bas-reliefs of Shiva, the goddess of destruction, and also explain why she was so celebrated. Like the Vietnamese attitude about the floating season, Shiva’s destructive powers were held in very high regard as destruction was necessary for rebirth and new growth. The brick work was unbelievable. It doesn’t appear that there is mortar between the bricks they are so tightly connected and when asked to identify which parts are original and which are renovated, it is easy to mistake the old for the new. There are temple altars representing the joining of male and female throughout and there are stones with Sanskrit carved into them. Duyen mentioned several times she believed it to be a peaceful place and I think it must be lovely to work there, deep in the forest with the sunlight falling on the temple towers and the mountains as a regal backdrop.

Champa Kingdom region and the remains of temple towers built between the 4

On our walk away from the site and back through the forest, we chatted with Duyen about this and that. Almost every day a Vietnamese person asks me if I have children. When we had dinner in Saigon with Mrs. Chi, she asked me and when I said no she thought she had translated poorly and asked again. It was incomprehensible to her that I didn’t and she eventually dropped it. Mr. Hung asked me and when I said I did not, he said he was very sorry. Yesterday a woman in the market asked me and when I said no, she looked at my hips and said I should be able to with hips like mine. It is clear that having children is very important here and it is hard for the people we have encountered to understand that I am happy and, more importantly, not ashamed of being childless. On our walk, Duyen also asked if we had children and when I said no, she said we seemed like happy people anyway. We asked her if she had children and she said no, she wasn’t even married and she was very old. In follow up we learned that she was only 28, but it was clear that 28 was very old to not be married with children here in Vietnam.

We met Owen for lunch on the grounds of the My Son Sanctuary property and had something that was either called Slippery Noodle or Slimy Noodle, I cannot remember which and it was noodles with beef in broth that was quite good. It is hot here, more hot than I could have imagined and it is also humid, more humid than I could have imagined, and this isn’t a caffeine free kind of culture and I’ve taken to drinking the occasional Fanta or 7Up or weird Vietnamese canned non-carbonated orange drink.

My Son is just outside of Hoi An so it didn’t take long for Owen to deposit us at our accommodations for the night: the River Beach Hotel, which is situated along the river and beautiful. Our room had sliding wooden doors that opened onto the river and a good bed, a much better bed than we’d had for days. Before we could commit fully to that relationship, we had agreed to meet Owen for dinner with his new tour group as our time with him had come to an end. He was taking an Israeli family of five back along the same route he had just taken us and suggested we all have dinner together. We met at an East Indian restaurant downtown called Namaste and which I would recommend to anyone visiting Hoi An. We’ve had so much excellent food, but this is the first restaurant whose name I recognize well enough to recommend because it isn’t a Vietnamese word. Dinner was hilarious. Father, mother, 16-year-old, 14-year-old and 6-year-old. The 6-year-old wanders and tinkers with electronics. One minute he was at the table, the next he was out on the street, the next he was playing with the restaurant manager’s laptop. He only eats fried foods and it was interesting to see Owen process what his next seven days would be like. I sat and chatted with the 14-year-old, Maia, about her experiences in school and traveling and in her family. She knows Hebrew, English and Arabic and would like to know French because she cannot imagine it not being fun to learn anything. She appreciates that her parents have given her the opportunity to see parts of the world. They most often go to Europe because it is very close and less expensive than some other places, like the United States. She said she likes to travel because then she can see that there are so many different ways for people to be good in the world and hearing that, my heart melted. While I was talking with her, Chris was learning that in order to get to Vietnam, Israelis must travel north to Moscow and connect there because El Al doesn’t fly over the Middle East for safety and security reasons. As much as travel enriches us, so do does meeting other travelers. It was a raucous, long dinner but it was a delight talking to Maia and her family about their lives. It gave me much to think about when I laid my head down on that excellent bed. 

One Clean Shirt Left But It Was Green

The B&B was full last night so we had breakfast with Angela and Michael from Ascot, outside of London. She's a secondary science teacher and he talks less.  They are here visiting her cousin something some number removed on her father's side who is a lighthouse keeper in Northern Ireland and she lived in New Jersey for a time in the 1970s. It's fun waking up and meeting people straight off and hearing about their lives and travel.

Anne and Eugene suggested that we avoid Derry today because it is a national holiday in Northern Ireland--Armed Forces Day, 12 July to commemorate the Orange Order defeating King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690--and they said the parades quickly turn to protests which quickly turn to violence, particularly after the drinking begins midday. Chris had arrived to breakfast in a green guyabera and I had on my last clean shirt which was green and blue and Eugene told us that we should change our shirts before heading out for the day because wearing green in Northern Ireland would be considered a political statement.

After changing, we left Letterkenny for the Coastal Route, a drive which brings you through Derry, Limavady, Castlerock, Coleraine and Bushmills on the way to the Giant's Causeway, which is a World Heritage Site. Coming up on Derry, it was clear it was a holiday. Everyone was decked out in red, white and blue or orange and purple and there were British and Orange Order flags everywhere. On the way out of Derry, we actually drove the parade route, so there were people lining the streets as we came past and traffic on the other side of the road was backed up terribly because the police were stopping and checking cars. We saw busloads of people coming in from towns outside of the city and there was part of me that wanted to stay in Derry for the day and just see, but Anne and Eugene had seemed awfully worried about us, I remembered that pyre we saw the men building yesterday and didn't relish watching people burn Ireland's flag, and we did have other plans so on we drove.

The drive is lovely and the politics are confusing to an outsider. There were sections of road where we saw nothing but Irish flags but those were very few. It was far more common to see British flags and Ulster flags, as well.And Northern Ireland uses the pound and miles and all things UK.

The coastal route is, as advertised, along the coast and we passed through several small holiday towns with caravan parks with units to rent by the week and cars that look as if they've been abandoned not quite along the side of the road, where people have left them to trudge their families down to the shore. There are no parking rules in this part of the world that we can determine. It isn't necessary to find a spot and it isn't necessary to park on the same side of the street that you are driving. This was laughable in Letterkenny, but seems death defying on the coastal road.

I admit we're travel dorks; last night we counted the number of World Heritage sites we've visited between the two of us. Between the Sydney Opera House in Australia and Chichen Itza in Mexico, we've been fortunate to see a great number of them. Today, we added Giant's Causeway to our list, a coastal area in which geological activity over millions of years worked to create 40,000 interlocking basalt columns and hexagonal rocks in bizarre formations. There are audio guided walks high and low to see the rocks from the shore and up the cliffs to see them from above. Irish mythology attributes the creation of these rocks to Finn McCool, a magical and benevolent giant.

We stopped for a late lunch in Bushmills, where the whisky is made, and in honor went to a local shop and ordered the whiskey and honey ice cream. Everyone should do just that. It was a good day.

Parade Day

Susan came to our place last night for cervezas y guacamole y good cheer and we talked about past and future travels. It was a good night followed by a good night’s sleep.

We met Sue at her hotel this morning for breakfast on the roof—yogurt, granola, papaya, pineapple, breads and jams—before starting out for the Cathedral where we hoped to pick up a walking tour guide.  When we arrived, another traveler in the Zocalo told us where we could find the tour but also told us that today was Friday and the tour is only on Tuesdays and Saturdays. She said she has been coming here for years and always takes this same tour at the beginning of her stay because it helps her re-orient and is full of information about current goings on so we will try again tomorrow. We regrouped to make a new plan. Small towns! We went to a travel agent on the square to make inquiries. We had missed the last guided collectivo. We regrouped to make a new plan. Monte Alban! We went to a travel agent on the square to make inquiries and we were off within minutes. 

Monte Alban is noteworthy in many ways. We visited Mayan ruins in Yucatan, but these were always at quite a remove from the city, requiring whole day trips higher into the mountains. Monte Alban is only seven miles outside of Oaxaca City. It is the oldest example of Mesoamerican civilization, the height of its existence dating from 500 BC to about 750 AD and, while built by Zapotecs, was inhabited by a diverse society of mixed indigenous peoples. There is a ball court, different from the Mayan courts with hoops we observed at Chichin Itza, but this site offers the same perfect acoustics. The buildings are all aligned on a precise north-south axis but one. Affectionately named Building J and thought to be built in approximately 1 AD, it appears—based on its shape like an arrow, the tip of the arrow pointing exactly southwest and the fact that on December 20^th the sun sets in the exact center of that SW tip—to have been an early stellar observatory of some sort. It certainly makes me want to return someday for a solstice party.  Another way this place distinguishes itself is because so many of the decorative stones with intact reliefs are still present and have been moved indoors to an onsite museum to protect them from elemental damage now that they have been unearthed. We were struck by layers of wonder: first the ancient building in front of us, then the scale of the site as a whole, then Oaxaca City in the valley below, then the mountain range beyond and beyond that the sky sharing every shade of blue available on today’s palette. 

In what we have come to know as typical fashion in this part of the world (and perhaps in ours, as well, but we never take tours at home so how would we know?), we believed that Gerardo would be our tour guide and then he passed us off to Alberto, who in turn left us with Luis at Monte Alban. Luis was informative and pleasant, but before we knew him Gerardo had told us a bit about how Mexicans view Benito Juarez in much the same way legend and history combine to view Abraham Lincoln. As a result of his stories, we decided to visit the museum housed in Juarez’s home upon our return to the city. We climbed several blocks above where we were dropped and then several blocks above that before we happened on the beginning of a parade. There were 20-foot tall dancing dolls, followed by men in white pants and shirts with red bandanas at their necks and straw hats who carried huge cellophane decorations held high on long sticks, followed by a brass band, followed by women in traditional dress who balanced floral arrangements on their heads, followed by masses of people, chanting something possibly wonderful (they didn’t sound angry?!) and wearing buttons, hats and shirts suggesting something about service and society. Many of them carried baskets of candy and more of them carried shot glasses and there were several men working their way through the crowd pouring mescal into those shot glasses here and there. It was a pretty terrific thing to stumble onto and the whole event was made better by the fact that (1) we also found ourselves at a food cart where we had a traditional favorite: an extra large tortilla, layered with Oaxaca cheese, meat and a fiery salsa then wrapped into a piece of paper to go and (2) we realized that food cart was right across the street from Benito Juarez’s home and museum. 

The museum was similar to Diego Rivera’s home in Guanajuato except that Diego Rivera left behind an awful lot of art and Benito Juarez left behind an awful lot of political history and that’s just a bit different to look at. We did learn that he was particularly celebrated by the indigenous people here because he was, in fact, Zapoteca. He came from and seemed to grasp humility. His parents died when he was only 3 and he lived first with an uncle who herded sheep and then moved to the city to live with his sister who worked in service in the household of the family Maza where he was exposed to wealth. Living in the city, the priest Antonio Salanueva mentored Benito, ultimately sending him to school, where he learned to speak, read and write Spanish as his second language. He continued to university and law school, entered politics and in addition to being a Supreme Court judge and governor of Oaxaca City, he was elected president of Mexico on three different occasions. He is compared to Lincoln because of his tireless efforts to improve the lives of indigenous people.

It was time for siesta, but Susan suggested a visit to the Plaza of Dances for helado before we parted ways and we struggled to understand some of the less obvious flavors: Beso de Oaxaqueno, for example, is a carrot ice cream with raisins and possibly and probably several other things in it. Following ice cream, we retired for naps and reading and a respite from the sun for me (we were all out the same amount of time and we were all under the same sun and I was the only one who applied and reapplied sun screen but still my parts are scorched and Susan and Chris have each established a healthy glow). Mexican Foof’s real name is Marta and the moment I stretched out on my back with a book, she draped herself over my belly for a nap, too.   

We met Susan back at her hotel for drinks at the bar on the roof and to decide about dinner. The bar is self service and please fill out a bill for yourself and leave it on the counter so someone can charge your room later and please also enjoy complimentary peanuts, which are peppered with fried garlic gloves and, well, fried peppers. We decided on Oaxacan cuisine and walked up to the Restaurant Zandunga which advertised flavors from the isthmus and which we enjoyed very much. Chris said that his mildly sweet tamale was among the best he’d had, Susan’s mole sauce was decadent and I had a spicy coleslaw and chile-infused mashed potatoes that were worth a visit of you’re ever in this town. 

We strolled the Zocalo after dinner and found it a different kind of charming on a Friday night than it is during the day. The buildings are lit from the ground up and there are so many people enjoying themselves it’s hard to not be happy.  One musical group swells and then fades into the next all around the square and some people dance to entertain and others dance for joy. 

Tomorrow, after giving our creaky feet, ankles, calves and knees a bit of a sleep, we’ll try for that walking tour again. And maybe we’ll get it and maybe we’ll regroup to make a new plan, but for sure we’ll do something.  

Sentimental Drivel

When I listen to the life stories of my students, I am no longer stunned by the rough edges, the splinters, the rusty nails. There was a time when I was shocked by their intimacy with violence and poverty, but I've come to understand that their experiences are probably more common globally than mine. Now I'm stunned rather when I think of my own childhood. When I was a little girl, I lived in a big white house with pillars, two parents and a wide green lawn. From my front porch swing, I could see the balloon man perched on his stool at the corner. In my memory, it was an old stool, with metal legs and a wooden seat, but that's a detail beyond my point. The point really is: there was a balloon man who worked my corner. Stephen King might be able to turn something like that sinister, but it wasn't; it was simply idyllic. I remember sometimes I could have a balloon, and I remember sometimes crossing to talk to the balloon man even if we weren't there to get one. There are a thousand other details from my childhood I could add, some things about the smell of chlorine, golf clubs cut to my size, storing marigold seeds in a coffee can in the winter and Father Walsh--one of many retired Jesuits who lived across the street and would toddle across for a visit, a nip and to quiz me in math--but I'm thinking about the balloon man tonight because of things that are no longer: like the days in which a knife sharpener was not a plastic tool thrown carelessly into the kitchen junk drawer but a man who walked the streets. One of the things I like about it here is that those jobs still exist. Each morning, we have woken to the sounds of men climbing through the alleyways in our neighborhood hawking their wares, shouting out or playing flute to alert their customers they're at hand. We have seen the local knife sharpener several times; he carries a red toolbox on a leather strap across his chest just like the one I remember the knife sharpener from my childhood carrying and he has a lovely whistle. I saw him on the street and had a brilliant, vivid, layered and happy memory of being a kid. Just that.

We spent the morning putting our last things together for our return trip to SMA and Mike came for our check out. A regret from our stay in GTO was not hearing more of his stories. We chatted just a bit this morning before we took off and learned that in addition to living in Mexico for these past 20 years, he also lived in Guatemala for five years in the mid 1970s. He was there, in fact, for the earthquake in 1976 which, we learned last summer, devastated whole areas. He and his wife owned several stores, two in Antigua and another in Panajachel, and, despite the absence of roads as we know them in the States, would travel to the outlying villages to purchase indigenous handicrafts to sell in them. Given the Guatemala with rather rudimentary infrastructure we experienced over three decades later, it sounds like quite an adventure to have had at the time they were there. While we had to leave to catch our bus, he was a pleasure to talk to and to listen to (hard sometimes to find both in one person) and we would recommend renting from him to anyone traveling in Guanajuato: La Casa de Dona Ana or Guanajuato B & B.

Unfortunately, I haven't been my level best the last 24 hours because of my intestines having been removed and replaced with a sausage grinder while I wasn't looking. It comes with the territory of reckless eating; I'm not sure which poison it might be that my body is fighting: the steady ingestion of regular milk and cheese, the possibly foul and contaminated street food that is so delicious and worth it in the moment or some questionable water I may have had with lunch yesterday (but I was SO thirsty). Still and all, Chris had a tongue taco by accident and he's fine: not fair. In any case, it fell well: we arrived back in SMA in time for a downpour so I overlapped my not feeling all that well with being trapped indoors by the rain with some school work I needed to submit anyway. We downloaded a movie and are going to hunker down for the rest of the evening and head out into the world of Mexico again in the morning.