Oaxaca Calendas

Oaxaca is the land of parties and parades. It was raining on one of our first days and we were wandering around town looking for our next hotel when we ran into a group of men holding giant balloon Flores. We walk into the place where it all seems to be happening and we see many people in costume as well as giant puppet figures. We asked what was going on….a 50th anniversary celebration for a market. Here we have a brass band, an army of senoritas and senors, and men hefting up giant balloon globes in the pouring rain, marching down the street.

The senoritas and senors dancing.

One of the giant balloon globes.

We hear that calendas (parades) and fiestas are almost daily occurrences in Oaxaca and indeed you often see brass bands and senoritas on the street. A political parade came by our window at the Spanish school…mid day.

The giant puppets.

Spanish Class in Oaxaca

I’m trying to learn Spanish and this is my second immersion school. We signed up for four hours a day for five days, the same I did last time in Costa Rica. The first day was OK, my fellow student was more advanced than me, but close in age, with all that comes with that. Meaning, we need a lot of repetition for the details of the language to stick in our brains, but she knew more words and had more experience with conjugations.

We had two teachers, one for the first two hours and another for the second two hours. There were no breaks. If you wanted a break, you had to sneak in at the changing of the guard. Also my classmate only signed up for three hour class so there was a teeny changing of the guard after hour three. It was a small miracle that I was able to keep myself from running screaming from the classroom with such a rigorous schedule. It reminds me of when I first started at Merck and discovered that it was common to hold three hour meetings without breaks. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but I somehow managed, and then later on when I had more control, cut the meetings down to one hour each.

On day two, a third student joined our class, who was even more advanced than the first, and young, child-bearing age in fact! She seem to be able to easily form sentences in the present and past tenses and had a large vocabulary in Spanish. When I spoke to her after class, she assured me that she was still learning even though she knew so much more than me.

However, as the week went on, I felt more and more lost as I was increasingly unable to understand what anyone was saying. I don’t know if this was good or bad. I do believe it’s always better to be with people who are better than you so that you can learn from them, but I was pretty lost. On two consecutive mornings, when I was still fresh, I felt but my head might explode I believe that I understood absolutely nothing about what was going on. I don’t think that was actually true, but my emotional body was freaking out!

Two days later, boom, cold sore. Stress.

The plan is to go back to Spanish school this week for three days after a four-day break. We have cut down the hours to three a day and are considering cutting back to two days, do older brains need more rest?

I am really enjoying trying to learn Spanish and trying to speak to the very lovely people of Oaxaca. Indeed, this is the first time in my life that I have spoken more than a short sentence in another language and I love the power of it and want to continue! There must be many ways to make this work, right? Wish me luck.