que rico!

today's breakfast...

today was a good day at school...i seem to have a very hard time remembering the spanish words for numbers over 200 but if given time i seem to sort it out...then again, sometimes not. sometimes it's about getting it all slowed down to the big dummy's speed - that would be me. 'mas lento, por favor' is your lesson for the day my friends. and they don't mind, the people you're asking to slow down...because generally it's because you're giving them money and they want it, for food they've made for you, so waiting a little and telling you slowly how much you owe them, seems to suit them just fine - god bless 'em.
after classes today i met with luiz - the local who is part of the inter-cambrio, and we went and hung out while trying to help each other with our new language trials and tribulations. his english is very good - though he thinks not, but, as i told him today, he could easily go to any american or canadian city and do just fine...no problema. he and i went for lunch and talked for a couple of hours and he corrected me, wrote words down for me, told me how better to say certain things and i taught him how to say some very important things...like, 'dirt nap'. as in, john took a bullet in the chest and is now having a long dirt nap. he liked dirt nap. but not as much as he liked the term 'shit tickets'. at first he was confused, and who wouldn't be and then as i explained that it was a term for toilet paper...he laughed so hard he could barely plug the words into his phone. he's a good guy...i like him. he wants to go for drinks on friday...one more way to learn - drink with the locals. ok. i'm game. i told julie and zack that luiz was gonna wear me out. but maybe i'll learn a little more spanish along the way. good trade.
i think i made a very important connection today...
it's good to have a 'local'...be it a local bar you frequent, or butcher or...i have decided that the place i have had breakfast the last two days is my go-to local eatery for breakfast...i was there yesterday and had a great little breakfast- chilaquilles - and then asked her if she made the same thing but with huevos. she said she did and i said i would be back manana...and i was. except, when i walked in, she suggested what i should eat...and today was enchiladas oaxaquenas. sure. i'm up for that...so basically it was tortillas, under a deep red/brown chili sauce, with crumbled cheese and fried eggs...awesome. no mucho picante but more sweet hot. i told her 'yo soy canadiense. estoy estudente en la escula espanol." she was cool with that and told me her daughter was going to try and go to school in canada for english. nice. so i'm going to go there and get a little extra dose of one on one spanish in the morning before school, then school, then luiz in the afternoon...and the food's pretty good too...bueno.
today in cooking class, and you'll have to forgive me but i have forgotten the recipe name but, we made tortillas from scratch, desde cero, and black beans, and a salsa made from garlic and local dried peppers soledad - the woman who teaches us - cooked a little more and then transfered to a pot of hot water and then to a mortar and pestal and we all took turns crushing it up...in the end we had these little corn tortillas filled with the black been, salsa and cheese...wicked.
ok. tomorrow's another big day at the school...maybe i'll learn something...garvie just sent me a couple of very nice pictures so i know all's well at home...the other night i skyped with the garbs and mishi - i had never done that before so that was cool...they'd like the garbs down here...
hasta manana.

te amo.

garncarlos

xo

zack gets down to business de-seeding chili's

and then later crushing the peppers, tomatillos and garlic and water into a salsa.

more de-seeding.

plates of corn tortillas that came off the grill and then had a little (poco) dark lard spread lightly on them.

just to prove i am here...a pic of me and our wonderful teacher soledad.

more mixing.

a young woman from washington - who's name i have forgotten right now - and julie, zack's wife and soledad. julie told me she was in the san francisco symphony not philharmonic.

this is (jose) luiz my mentor...we're gonna go drinkin'. apparently.

more goods for the food we made.

and the finished product.

the corn dough.

after the tortillas are made they're loaded up with food stuffs, in this case beans, salsa and cheese, and then put back on the grill to melt the cheese and crisp them up a little.

snack time.

cassie's hand taking it's/her turn crushing the salsa.

bill gives it a go.

you never know who you'll meet

alex, a fellow student here in oaxaca - and somewhat frequent (thus far) character on the blog since i've been here, is a film student and has made a couple music videos for a friend of his - kono michi - and i thought i'd pass along the link so you can check out her work...well, and his work. this is a link to her web site...
good stuff....

garncarlos

xo

fyi.

for those of you who may be thinking how great it is that i'm here in the sunny climes of mexico - and it is great - i just want you to know this. i, as a wear of shorts nearly year round, has not worn shorts since leaving vancouver a week-ish ago. truth.
it is very cold here in the mornings and the afternoons are warm but you don't break a sweat while walking around. it's like september in vancouver weather.

just sayin'.

ok. i'm off to get a mystery breakfast.

g. xo

my brain may just explode...

...and it's only day two....whoa.
it was a tough day, one where i left like i took a step backwards. but, as i told garvie, it's good and i'm still givn'er, or trying to - but it can hurt your head sometimes. and really, i'm at the beginning of what, could be, a lifelong journey and i shouldn't expect too much from this trip but, i'm still making the flash cards and reading and listening and....good lord it's hard. i need a head massage.
i met my inter-cambrio/language exchange local today and he's a good guy - so far. a 28 year old government worker who is kinda between contracts right now so he has time to come to the school and try and improve his english by talking to me and i, hopefully, will learn from him as we speak. his name is jose luiz. but wants me to just call him luiz because jose is so mexican...he said this laughing...he said, 'you'll tell your friends you're hanging out with a guy named jose and they'll laugh....'. so luiz it is. he told me about his life, his schooling, etc...and then when i told him i worked in film, and then that it was special effects, i became a very cool guy in his eyes...i tried to assure him i was but a small cog in a rather large FX wheel but he was having none of it...lol. so i told him how a few things were done and some films that i had worked on, some of which he had seen, and now he's even more stoked to hang out...so great. we're only scheduled to talk an hour a day but he asked if i wanted to go outside of school and talk and walk around and he would show me things and teach me more that way instead of just being at the school. i think this is great. he knows i cook and wants to take me to the market and teach me things there...coolio. mucho beuno.
i hope luiz doesn't get me into trouble.
i have met some great people here at the school and am finding it easier than i expected to get in there and say hello, and make mistakes (like tonight when i asked a woman at the food stand i was at - after eating - where something was instead of what something was called....), and the cross section of students is very wide. i have had great conversations with some of the students who are much older than myself...i'm gonna get a picture of bill, a guy from madison, wisconsin, who is so fuckin' awesome. i'll leave my description of him for when i get a picture but he's wicked. also zack and julie who are a retired couple who live in jackson hole, wyoming who are excellent as well. he is some sort of big deal scientist - though he'd never tell you so, and his wife - julie, was a player in the san francisco philharmonic but she downplays it...she helps me when it's clear i don't know what's going on. they're all in classes higher than mine but our cooking class is a mixed group so most, well all, of them are far more advanced in their spanish. but that's ok...
the cooking was interesting today - even though i didn't understand much of what the teacher had to say - a very nice local woman of perhaps 6o or so - but i followed along as she made the food...we help as we can, she gives us tasks. we're making some fancy refried beans tomorrow and corn tortillas from scratch. and today we made a corn based hot chocolate drink. really good shit chico.
tonight i went to the zocalo and walked around - i find it nice to not come directly back here after school. better to go for a walk, listen a little, eat, then come here. sort of a zone out time.
ok. homework now.

i love you.

g. xo

that's zack - world famous scientist or so i'm lead to believe by bill from madison...and the teacher. zack is awesome. and his wife julie is as well...

a bunch of posters i saw near my apartment. i love that on the one poster the music is done by rooster soundsystem. only in mexico.

we all took turns mixing the chocolate drink...the woman working it in the picture is from victoria, the woman beside her is cassie, from seattle - she had her boyfriend are in mexico for six months and my man zack.

a little look around....

i thought i'd just post a few pics of the school grounds as well and a couple more from my walk to school and such...just some random pics from my scholastic life here...

bueno.

g. xo

ps...school was fuckin' hard today.

and here are some random pics.

the school grounds


the place i had my breakfast today

outside my apartment.

more school grounds.

some good drinks.

guy working in the school grounds

getting my morning fix.

chris from l.a. he kinda has some crazy facial hair.

a little buddy in my bathroom this morning

breakfast.

food at my new joint.

a street i go down on my way to school. it's a nice walk.

more of my little buddy.

um...how you say?....perfecto.

oh i've got a sore back. more walking with too much in my pack - the rough life of a school boy...

i think they were scrambling to get us into this cooking class and didn't know what to do because they weren't offering it, and now they are so... or as they say in espanol, 'entonces', they took us to the market while they figured out what to do. in other words, show the students around while we get some shit together to teach them. so we went to the market (el mercado) on the bus - eight (ocho) of us - and looked around. but we had all been there before and for me, as i'm still getting it going here, i didn't understand much of what the teacher was saying - this, in case i haven't told you, is deep immersion. from the second i walked into class today, it was spanish. very little (poco) english at all. only when needed. or as they say in the nursing world - PRN. so it's a thing. i'll tell you. kinda trial by fire. if i don't learn anything then i really am a big dummy.
entonces....
there we were walking around - all of us at different levels of spanish - and the teacher just rambling on like we all spoke perfect spanish...weird but good. either you're gonna catch on or you're not. period. i do love seeing the moles and other cooking ingredients - and i'm gonna bring me home some.

tomorrow after classes and my inter-cambrio (language exchange with a local), we'll be cooking for real...i hope. and whatever i learn i'll bring back with me, in my head, and make for you...deal.

i'm back here now with some blank recipe type cards (tarjetas) and i'm going to make myself some flash cards to practice my phrases, words and such with. and trying to buy blank cards when you don't know how to say it...and you're in a small back street place with your poor spanish...but i made it and we all had a laugh...maybe they were laughing at me. oh well.

te veo manana.

garncarlos
xo

hola. mi nombre es garnet. donde esta el bano?

ok.
the first day of formal classes is over - i still have my cooking class/instruction/workshop to go (yes, under pressure they brought it back....) - and then i'll be going home to study and think about what happened...
today after class alex and i went and had lunch at a place not far from the school. we both had the mole con pollo that came with soup and tortillas. it was great....and at the end when i picked-up my bag to leave a huge cockroach fell off my bag and onto the table...we pointed it out to the woman who was clearing our table - we weren't fussed by it but more just wanted her to know that it was there - and when she saw it she grabbed the sugar container and crushed it and pushed it off the table.
fuckin' awesome. i loved it. i'm going back there for sure.
now a little relax before the cooking...

g. xo

examo

i just took my oral exam to place me in the correct class....turns out i'm a big dummy...i'm a sweat hog in the beginners class...

super duper! exactly where i want to be...

g. xo

say hey! say asada!

tonight i met the kids - alex and wendy - down at the zocalo and we had a nice dinner as our last before we became students at the institute. all very exciting and nerve wracking and...and i don't know if i mentioned this already or not but, last night when i was studying i realized that i had lost all knowledge i previously had of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctive prepositions, articles, definite articles, etc...i mean by this that i know what they are but i haven't thought in that vein for many years - and really school wasn't really taught like that when i was being taught in the 70's and 80's...verb and noun, sure ok...but that other stuff was there but not there. so when i was reading one of my many books it described things as 'when you take the definite article and use the conjunctive verb or adverb it becomes a preposition except when the word ends in 'X' then all bets are off.' ok. got it. next. very humbling and so great that i have the internet to set me back on the straight and narrow. nothing like feelin' like a big dummy. ya big dummy!
so we had a nice dinner. alex a torta, wendy a chili relleno and me the large flat carne asada with a nice side of mole negro in a tortilla and some black beans. i know how senor tornack loves the mole and i want him to know i'll be bringing home the goods to make us all a little mole action. good stuff.

(i wish the folks upstairs would stop walking around...sit down ya dummies!)
and so. i sit here with a nice glass of water after dinner having one last relax before i have to hit the books for real. will i learn some spanish? maybe. probably. but really, i think this whole thing will be great - i've already (as garvie pointed out) had a great experience without any school...so it's all a bonus. it'll be hard but at least i'll get to eat some amazing food and meet some folks also trying to make their food ordering in mexico and elsewhere just that much easier.
bueno.

night night

g.xo

oh. completely unrelated but, today i was listening to some music in the apartment and a song cam on that i have heard many, many times before but decided today that it may be one of the world's great love songs. you should listen to it. '1952 vincent black lightning' by richard thompson from the album 'rumor and sigh'. really great.
just sayin'.

.......

dinner action...bad flash...oops...

all gone...

alex's torta

here's how this goes...

so i made it out of here shower-less this morning but i think, now that i'm home, there's a little more water coming out. perhaps i'll try and have a shower before i go out for dinner. maybe i'll just grease it up while i'm here and not shower at all...not shave. nothing.
maybe not.
so i spent the better part of today walking around with wendy and alex. man, we did some truckin' around. the town really isn't that big and i feel like i've seen a lot of it. my fear is that i will have seen every nook and cranny in the first week and then just spend my days after school and on the weekends drinking modelo at the zocalo and eating mystery foods...though that doesn't sound so bad. really.
my purchase last night of the fancy runners paid off in spades today as i wouldn't have been able to walk half as far as we did in the other shoes. nice shoe action.
oaxaca is known for a lot of things foodwise and today i had one of them during our walk - ice cream. they made an ice cream that's more like a sorbetto/granita or glace. less milk, more ice and all made with fresh fruits. i had a cactus fruit and lime combination today and may just eat every flavor they have by the time i leave. i'm not a super sweets guy but this shit is the bomb - as the kids say.
i'm back now after getting some groceries so i'm more set-up for the mornings before school...i brought coffee from jj bean here and my stove top espresso maker. so now i have bread, yogurt, juice, etc...i'm ready to roll into class full of caffeine and ready to learn something...'i don't feel tardy'
tonight dinner downtown and home to get ready for the first day of classes...

adios.

g. xo

some street shots from my walk today...




today as it was sunday made this place a busy locale.

a shot from high above the city.

this was a great treat after a long walk...and more walking to come afterwords.

more busy sunday religion action.

if you're lookin' for some chicken - they got 'em.

and if you're lookin' for some enchiladas con pollo - they got that too. enchiladas here are not like enchiladas in northern mexico or california or arizona.

but they're super tasty. they'd be garbs approved for sure.

my pals alex and wendy.


wendy is from santa rosa, california and is a teacher - kind of and does things with organic growers in her area and alex is a film student going to vassar and discovering the world.

stinky

well...i just went to have a shower here in my deluxe pad...and i have no water. well, it came out for a second and now, it's gone.
great. guess i'll be stinky until they figure that one out...
bummer.

g. xo

my hip pad

thought i'd show you a few photos of my place here in oaxaca. pretty deluxe. i have not been sleeping well since arriving in mexico but hopefully as i get used to the bed here that changes....either that or it's naps in the afternoon - something i rarely do but may have to learn to do.

have fun today.

g. xo