Tule Village Adventures

It started with a note home from school: "Geni necesita una falda." Geni needs a skirt.

This message could mean a number of things, from a school uniform request to some new rule being implemented. Upon pursuing the topic with Geni's teacher, Jukari, it becomes clear that Geni needs a folkloric dance skirt done in the traditional style, made to measure, for the Thursday Zapotec dance classes. By next week, please.

Wouldn't you know it that Geni's classmate, J., has a grandma in Tule village who makes these skirts? We followed the directions given by Rosalea, the third grade teacher, who told us to approach the tree, walk around it, and head toward the block with the little mezcal shop. There we would find a tiny storefront filled with folkloric clothes and a workshop with J.'s grandmother inside.

But looking for a mezcal shop next to a folkloric clothing store near the Tule tree is like telling a tourist to head for the store under the neon sign in Times Square. Every block with its own mezcal shop! Folkloric clothing for days! The only option is to ask every single store owner where J.'s grandma, the seamstress, is.

Three sets of instructions later, we stumble upon the shop, so close to the giant Tule tree that its upper branches provide shade through the doorway.

The grandma emerges from the back courtyard holding a baby and greeting Geni. She's the outfitter for the entire student body of Colegio Stanley Hall, Geni's elementary school. The girls at the school's Zapotec dance classes all wear tiered skirts trimmed with lace, with enough extra fabric that they can gather the skirts by the edges and raise the edges over their heads without revealing their legs. Quite a feat, really.

But where is the fabric for the skirts? Grandma disappears under tables and begins a looooong treasure hunt through various plastic bags, leaving us in charge of the baby.

Endless reams of fabric everywhere but, apparently, the just right fabric is not there. I know how this story goes, having lived seven years in Oaxaca, and I want to cut to the chase rather than do the "come back four times" thing. I tell her we will take any fabric, that it does not matter. We need the skirt by next week!

Grandma takes Geni's measurements and writes them down on a tiny scrap of paper that most certainly will be immediately lost. How could it not be? She also asks for 250 pesos up front, no small sum. But all that extra fabric will bring up the total to 500 pesos, if she can just locate the fabric.

What color does Geni want? She watches Geni but then realizes Geni has not seen any of the choices. She descends again to locate swatches, samples, anything. She finds a patch of green.

"Yes, green! Si, verde!" says Geni, surprisingly agreeable.

Grandma's eyebrows knit in worry. She is out of green, even though it is the only sample she has located for us. She offers purple.

I am anxious, in only the way a US person gets when in a Oaxaca village with school demands breathing down her neck. "Si, si!" I say.

Geni says, "No."

I coax and plead with Geni, knowing we will not get the skirt in time unless we can agree to this mythical purple fabric. She finally acquiesces.

I place the order, pay, and get a receipt. As we turn to leave, Grandma says, "Come back soon to see the purple fabric and make sure it's what you want. I'll try to find a sample of it by Monday."

Of course you will, abuelita. There is no speeding up when you are on Oaxaca village time. I just have to remember that this is a good thing.

No skipping hip hop

When did things swerve so much toward the everyday? I am subsumed consumed by roof repairs, property taxes, immigration papers, and just keeping the house clean amidst random items falling from the roof.

One everyday thing has risen from the mundane, however. My nightly exercise class, which I never attend nightly, fascinates me. It all began three months ago when I saw a chubby guy teaching hip hop in our neighborhood park. I did some digging and found out he was associated with Oaxaca's government campaign to offer free exercise classes in public spaces. Except he wasn't, because he came after the official teacher left. He set up his boom box, stacked in reggaeton, soul, pop and retro hits, and made everyone dance like mad, for at least an hour.

The women loved him so, one night, when he burst into tears, turned off the music, and engaged in a half hour speech I could not decipher, they embraced him. They gave him change for CDs and his mototaxi to class. They congratulated him when he proudly announced he has lost 10 kilos teaching the class. And they supported him pushing me to the front of the class to help him teach, though I tried to stay in back.

So, when 2011 came but the teacher did not, the women did not want to give up on the unofficial class. Perhaps the teacher abandoned them for a paid gig, or maybe he's going to gain back those 10 kilos. All I know is that the women still show up, bringing their own boom box and their own CDs. They quibble over steps, trying to remember his routines. And, at some point, they turn to me, and ask me to come up front and lead a couple numbers. I do it willingly now, because I see how they are struggling to keep the class a class, and working together.

It inspires me beyond the endorphin rush, watching them kick ball change and grapevine and mambo and salsa and merengue. At the end of every class, they gather to guilt trip one another into coming again tomorrow, bringing a bit more resolve into those 2011 resolutions.

So you think you can dance?

I cannot pay adequate tribute to our 8-day journey from California to Oaxaca, especially since, after we returned home, we all came down with the stomach flu. I blame the bootleg Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlor and arcade off the highway in Puebla.

Puebla, in general, was not good to us. We found ourselves in Friday's late rush hour, stuck at an OXXO (sorta Circle K) essentially giving up. We could not wrangle our way through the mess and the gnarl, so we decided to make the 4-hour drive to Oaxaca on the almost-done tire over the rocky road. And then, like a beacon, the City Xpress hotel popped in front of us. A strip mall. A generic trying-to-be boutique hotel, flanked by a bowling alley and a aforementioned Chuck E. Cheese. Max said, "This is the nicest place we've stayed the whole time." You can take the boy out of the suburbs, but...

Why lead with the low points, though? I could mention the Mazatlan mini-vacay, with a 10pm visit to a quickly disappearing Olas Altas beach as the tide came in. I kept yelling to Max, "Only five more minutes!" but it was truly beautiful. On the way out of Mazatlan, I leaned out the car window and asked a roadside vendor for a bottle of fresh, cold coconut water, which is sold at many busy intersections. Mexican road trip food has it all over U.S. road trip food (except for Poblano pizza).

The definite high point caught me by surprise. We were all cranky over the recent loss of Snuggles, Max's favorite stuffed gorilla that he left in the hotel room in Los Mochis. I suggested we take a half-day vacation from our road trip, and veer off to Guanajuato, a place Steve, Jenny and I used to hang.

It worked. GTO is a city of subterranean streets, tunnels, bridges and cobblestone alleyways, all of which appealed to Max's "I'm lost in a labyrinth" and Geni's "I'm Velma from Scooby Doo" fantasy mentalities. I dragged my kids along to see all the old favorite haunts, and they did not complain. They loved the gardens and crumbling remains of the ex-Hacienda de San Gabriel de Barerra. Max willingly discussed the artwork and its symbolism at the all-Don Quixote museum, one of my little strange treasured places. And they even hung for a 9pm visit to Truco 7, the funky kinda bohemian cafe where we scored blacky purply mole enchiladas. It reminded me why Guanajuato was always our second choice, after Oaxaca.

Coming home to Oaxaca, we're caught in this strange time warp of waiting for school to start but also trying to get better from the stomach bug. I can tell I'm starting to improve, though, because I was researching an article and came across a mention of Bollywood Booty dance fitness, and I got excited, thinking, "I will have a Bollywood Booty." Now that I'm two years into this Oaxaca lifestyle, and perhaps have this freelance for a living thing figured out (knock wood), it's time to focus the year on dancing, I think.