Mexican (duh!) Fireworks - Dias de San Felipe del Agua

So the last week our town of San Felipe has been having one of its bigger celebrations.  The highlight of this week is the night with fireworks.  Every Mexican celebration has explosions (e.g. firecrackers, pop-bottle rockets, flash-bang mortars) but these are fireworks that are colorful.

Besides the carnival in the town square (with rides for kids and games such as "toss the ring on the bottle"), there are bands on the bandstand with couples dancing in the streets, and food & drink stands.  But mainly it's everybody getting together in the town square watching people and talking with friends and neighbors...and a heavy dose of passing around mezcal bottles....though not as much as during the winter celebrations it seemed.

We joined our neighbors in the square a bit after 7:30 pm and passed the time playing, eating, drinking and talking.  We were hoping they'd start the fireworks around midnight and we'd be home by 1am.  We ended up getting home around 4am.

Here are some videos from different celebrations years ago to give you an idea of what we watched once the fireworks started.

Around 1am they started the "dancing with the bulls and angels."  The crowd gathers around and people take turns putting these handmade contraptions on their heads.  The sparks fly everywhere, sometimes burning items shoot off into the crowd (as we are all gathered right around the "performance area"), and all the bulls and angels include whistles and explosions in addition to the colored sparkles.  In this video the crowd is nowhere as pressed in as last night. In addition, there was usually at least two figurines dancing while zero to six helpers danced with and taunted the "bulls" (as you'll see some do in this video). The bull & angel dancing went on here last night way too long.  Maybe 50-60 of these as we waited for the grand finale: El Castillo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flmQBL6pliQ

This next video really doesn't do justice to seeing a castillo going off. It starts with more "bull dancing" and the castillo fires up at around 1:58min. The whole thing is on a tower maybe thirty to forty feet high with the crowd gathered around its base as close as they dare with all the falling sparks. For us that means they are maybe six to ten feet from it.  Kids on their parents' shoulders, babies sleeping against their mother's bosom, town drunks sleeping against a lamp-post base all right up in the mix of it all. As always in Mexico, there is zero concern for personal safety...life is short and God will decide if yours should be shorter (or completed sans eye or limb).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2QpL7iEh5E

Viva la Revolution!

None of us knows the shape of the future. This half-century of disorders teaches us that the future is a secret which is divulged neither in the works of Karl Marx nor in those of his adversaries. But we can say this much to the future which a few impassioned young men are somewhere building: every revolution that stifles criticism, that denies the right to contradict those in power, that prohibits the peaceful substitution of one government for another, is a revolution that defeats itself - is a fraud. My conclusions will irritate many people. No matter: independent thought is almost always unpopular. We must renounce outright the authoritarian tendencies of the revolutionary tradition, especially its Marxist branch. At the same time, we must break up the existing monopolies - whether of the state, of parties, or of private capitalism - and discover forms, new and truly effective forms, of democratic and popular control over political and economic powers and over the information media and education. A plural society, without majorities or minorities: not all of us are happy in my political utopia, but at least all of us are responsible. Above all and before all else: we must conceive viable models of development, models less inhuman, costly, and senseless than those we have now. I have said before that this is an urgent task: the truth is, it is the task of our times. And there is one more thing: the supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, "Not yet," and thus denies us. The future is not the time of love: what man truly wants he wants NOW. Whoever builds a house for the future happiness builds a prison for the present.

- The Other Mexico (1972) by Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

Formato #4, Agente #036

I could have SWORN I posted this last time we did our Mexican visa renewals, but can't find it anywhere.  My buddy L is doing his MX visa renewal this month, so this goes out to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXWZ3uAEKsw

REAL food, finally

I have decided it's time to put the gastrointestinal system to the test....or at least quit treating it like a delicate baby.  I got a lunch recommendation from a wise gringo at the OLL yesterday.  I had a batter-fried chili rellano stuffed with a spicy, shredded chicken mixture, beans, a salad, tortillas, rice, ice cream and Coke for $45 pesos (~$4 US).  I think it was the best meal I've had in Oaxaca so far.  I think the place's name is Isabella's but I'll do a proper write-up after my second visit.

Español Banking Terms for your Mexican Visa Efforts

Well this (i.e. http://costablanca.angloinfo.com/countries/spain/bankterms.asp ) was a start but some of these are wrong and some may be regional to Spain instead of Mexico (as needed for our Mexico VISA application/processing).  Thus my list of banking statement terms translated to Spanish from English.  I.e. DSD's translation of his bank statements from English to Español.  YippieKiEh, Motherfuckers!

English	Spanish
Account Number	Número de cuenta
Amount	Cantidad
Assets	Activos
ATM & Debit Card Withdrawals	ATM y Retiros Tarjeta de Débito
Balance	Saldo
Balance Summary	Resumen de saldo
Balancing Your Checkbook	Cotejar tu cuenta
Beginning Balance	Saldo Anterior
Card Purchase	Compra con Tarjeta
Card Purchase Return	Devolución
Card Purchase with PIN	Compra con Tarjeta con NIP
Checking Account Summary	Resumen de la cuenta de cheques
Checks Paid	Cheques Pagados
Continued	Seguido
Credit	Crédito
Customer Withdrawal	Retiro de cliente
Date	Fecha
Description	Concepto
Deposit	Depósito
Deposits and Additions	Depósitos y adiciones
Electronic Payment	Pago Electronico
Electronic Withdrawals	Retiros electrónicos
Ending Balance	Saldo final
Fees	Honorarios
Fees and Other Withdrawals	Honorarios y otros retiros
Free Checking	Cuenta gratis de cheques
Page 1 of 6	Página 1 de 6
Primary Account	Cuenta Principal
Savings Account	Cuenta Ahorros
Service Fee	Pago por Servicio
This Period	Este periodo
Total	Total
Total Assets	Total de Activos
Transaction Details	Detalles de la transacción
Transfer	Transferencia
Withdrawals and Other Fees	Retiros  y otros honorarios

Waiting for TelMex

Tuesday August 23rd, 2011



Still no Internet today. The house’s property manager, Cipriano Ramos (who has been a HUGE help to us as we’ve been trying to get settled in here) called TelMex today and we went through the tier-1 tech support to no avail. There are supposed to send a technician out in “24 to 36 hours.”


At Teizcali school starts at 7:50AM. Since we don’t have a car we walk to school. Our _route_ takes about 20 to 25 minutes. Thus wake up time is around 6:15 or so. We are not a bright-and-early type of family so this early start time plus the one hour difference in time zones between Oaxaca and Denver, CO, USA means things are a bit grouchy around here.


After walking down to B’s school this morning I found out that TELMEX techs can show up well outside of American or Mexican “business hours.” They can seemingly come as early as 7 am and as late as 8pm….any day of the week. And if you miss them when they come you allegedly go to the bottom of the queue. I will not be leaving the house it seems.

Oaxaca School for B

The DSL Internet connection is down today  (i.e. Monday August 22^nd, 2011) so we’ll have to write this up in Word and post it to Blogger.com later…..




Braeden started school today at his new private school, Colegio Teizcali. Realize that a private school here is not as exclusive or elitist as in America. Now that isn’t to say it can’t be exclusive or elitist here; some very private private schools are available here (as pretty much everywhere). But based on the information we rec’d from our Oaxacan resources (e.g. friends here, Internet sources), putting your kid in a public school is mostly a waste of time. From what I understand this mainly has to do with the stranglehold the Mexican teachers’ union has on the education system. There are probably ample information/opinion resources on that topic but suffice to say that Mexican educators seem to have studied the American Teamster’s playbook from that union’s “tough guy” years and amplified it tenfold. The children are simply pawns/hostages in a political game which leads to many days of cancelled school and very poor education practices when school actually is in session.


We arrived at school around 7:30 to find the typical collection of first-day-of-school parents and children. A few non-natives such as us were mixed in amongst the mostly Mexican crowd. We wore our no-habo-Español-gringo smiles as the Spanish-speaking staff, parents and kids stirred about in something slightly passing as organized kid herding. We eventually understood that the kids were being checked in by grade and then divided into new students and previous students. Once the previous students were let through the interior door to the classrooms & schoolyard area, the new students remained in the atrium/lobby/foyer lined up alphabetically by grade. Then slowly from the interior courtyard/schoolyard the new students names were called out. As the courtyard was around the corner of the interior doorway, we couldn’t see what was going on in there yet could hear clapping as each new student and their parent(s) walked around the corner into the schoolyard. When our turn came we found ourselves walking down a “pathway” through the courtyard leading to the (concrete paved) athletics area (the slightly winding pathway created across the open courtyard by two rows of fresh-cut flowers acting as pathway borders). All the staff and the returning students, as well as the new parents and kids already called in, stood about clapping and smiling at as us we walked to join the other fourth grade parents and students in the designated area.


Once all the new students had joined the assembly, a few short speeches (en Español) were given. E.g. the school principal welcomed everybody and had a boy and girl model this year’s uniforms. Next the microphone was taking over by a young man wearing black jogging-suit pants and a black t-shirt imprinted with “No Pain No Gain” (in English). The morning calisthenic begin…first _slow_ and then _faster_. Once this was done we re-assembled in our grade groups and the kids were taken to their respective classrooms by their new teachers.


Afterwards we stood around talking with two parents we met: Jeff, a gringo lawyer from CA, and Humberto, a native. Since both are bilingual we asked them what the highlights of the morning’s speech were. “Nothing of importance” was Jeff’s response.


At 2:50 school was released and Meredith and I walked back down to school to fetch our son and his 20lbs…oops…~10Kg of school supplies. No lockers or cubbies, it seems. At the afternoon swarm we met Jeff’s wife Kim, as well as a different Kim, and another couple from CA – Mark and Natasha, as well as a Nina. Mark and Natasha and “different Kim” (tagged as “Kim #1” by Meredith) are all new to Tiezcali and Oaxaca. The other gringos in our new clique have been here for a year or more. Actually, Mark and Natasha’s family have been vacationing in Oaxaca for years, but, like us, have just moved down here to live here for a year. I’m worried we’ll congregate as English speakers and forego immersion time in Mexico. Especially since I detect a since of relief and interest in getting to know these fellow Americans who have either already learned the things we’re currently facing or are struggling with the same culture-shock concurrently.

It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all. It's a small, small world.

But it seems to have taken a hell of a lot to get only part way across said globe.  Yes, my family and I have finally made it to our new home in San Felipe del Agua, Oaxaca, Mexico
(i.e. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=5+al+paraque+comunal,+san+felipe+del+agua,+oaxaca,+mexico&hl=en&sll=17.113487,-96.71019&sspn=0.005875,0.009634&vpsrc=0&t=h&z=16 ). 

My wife and son are doing the American-in-Mexico blog thang (which some say is soooo cliche and passe) so I'll leave it to them to fill in the background and details on what the hell we are doing here:

      http://OaxacaBraeden.BlogSpot.com/
      http://MexicoMeredith.BlogSpot.com/ 

Been trying to get up to speed on base things here (e.g. buying food, getting around a city of 250K with no car, learning basic Spanish phrases (e.g. ¿el baño, por favor? ).  More pointless drivel (but with a focus on Mexico and such) from yours truly in the days to come.