Arts & Sciences Track: Week 1

After spending last week working with different cooperatives in small villages, it was nice to reunite as a group back in Oaxaca city this week. First thing Monday morning we had class at SURCO, but this time we were the teachers. Each group put together a short presentation about each cooperative to give the rest of the group a better idea of how everyone spent their week. It was interesting and informative to learn how different each cooperative was and the unique experiences of all the group members.

            Tuesday kicked off the first day of our tracks, which means you will all now have three different blogs to read every week! As members of the Arts and Sciences track, we went back to Solexico for our fifth and final week of Spanish classes. The majority of us were in the same class and were intrigued by our new professor, who really just wanted to chat with us in Spanish. After talking mostly about riddles and jokes and then playing BASTA, the Mexican version of scategories, we realized this final week would be more fun than tough. We did have to complete a final exam and hand in one last paper, but then we were taken out to cafés and mercados as well as chocolate factories and museums. I think we all felt that this was a great way to improve our conversational Spanish skills and get to experience more of the city that we had not yet.

            At our group meeting on Thursday, Mary Lucia passed out our village stay reflections and gave us a few moments to read them over and think about any other realizations we might have come to since writing them. We then went around and, based on our village stays, shared one thing we wanted to start doing for the remainder of our time here and one thing we wanted to leave behind. It was very beneficial to hear what everyone had to say because it made us think about things we might not have thought about otherwise.

            Friday counted our final day at Solexico and it was a bittersweet goodbye. We are all excited to move onto the next phase of our trip, but a lot of us will be missing Spanish class. As the weekend rolled around, Mary Lou informed us of some cool and uniquely Oaxaca things to do. On Saturday morning a handful of the group went to Abastos, a market that had an infamous reputation and lets just say you should not wear nice jewelry and you should put your money in your pants. You can also expect to see the unexpected, such as a box of crayola-colored chicks. After about two hours of walking through an overwhelming and massive market, and not passing the same thing twice, everyone went home for comida. But the day was not over yet! There was a traditional dancing event going outside of El Soledad, one of the many churches in Oaxaca. Although we were hit with some of the coldest temperatures we have had here, some of us still went to enjoy the festivities and it was completely worth it!

            As we look towards next week, the Arts and Sciences track will begin our music class and we are all thrilled to start that adventure!

Con mucho amor,

Brittany and Kathleen