i'm required to go there with her

There's a lot of things to miss about Jenny, and one is the easy way we talked to each other. I just read an old email she wrote me, one of the last ones, but I pretended I just got it from her. Here it is:

Serena I wish you were here because Gaudi is coolio, he is so cool, cooler than gelato, and I should know, because I´ve eating some.

I have never seen buildings like this. You are required to come here with me and see these buildings. You are to look Gaudi up on the internet right now and enter Casa Batllo, I think that is how you spell it. Or don´t look it up, either way, because i bought a little book and i´ll show it to you and you will cry.

The buildings! The spires are like ice cream cones (and i should know), and Casa Batllo has no straight lines, just curves and sea shapes and blue tile. Oh god, it´s cool.

Food is good too. We already have a favorite tapas place, right near the hotel. And we enjoyed our pizza at lunch, though we were surprised when, after we both ordered the menu of the day (salad, a bottle of water, bread, pizza and chocolate mousse), that we both got a pizza and in fact, we each got a large pizza. Then i looked around and saw that everyone in the whole place had their own pizza. Geez.

Very fun! I´ll try to write again soon. Kiss to Max.
xoJen

I'm thinking up my reply.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Speak Zapotec

I've been on some adventures as I have tried to meet the goals of my new year's resolution to live more green.

The complete switch to cloth napkins and rags was nothing. They really work better and look better than their paper versions, anyway.

Recycling issues are another thing. There is no curbside recycling in Oaxaca. In fact, garbage is a whole different ballgame here. You do not leave cans out on the street for pickup. Instead, you wait for the lovely tinkle of a bell or, in our neighborhood, the blasting behemoth of a horn. Then, everyone in the vicinity runs out, most often holding old burlap dog food bags or buckets rather than full-on trash cans. They converge at the truck in one of those classic Mexican non-lines that everyone understands the logic of, except me. Some people pass folded cardboard boxes or bags filled with plastic bottles to the collectors, who sometimes hang it on the side of the truck and sometimes throw it into the back with the garbage. So that does not look like recycling to me.

I noticed that at the Casa de Cultura, a government building where the kids take art classes, signs about the environment. Soon, some receptacles showed up, labeled cardboard, plastic and tin. No one seems to use them. I started clearing out our kitchen cupboards so I could bring a load of recycling down. I sorted it all out and stuffed my things into the bins according to instructions. But, for some reason, I wonder...will they get recycled?

Which brings me to the great epiphany. I've begun asking the people at the street markets who sell yogurt, honey, juice and other liquid things if they want containers. Now, when I load my shopping bag with biodegradable plastic produce bags, I also pack in containers and lids of all sizes so I can give or return them to the various vendors. This act feels more powerful than the other green things I have done this year. It's only the cost of my time walking to the market, and it gives them something they need for free. It uses no energy, like recycling does, and it gets me embroiled in many conversations and situations with the vendors. I'm looking forward to trying to give back my honey container to the old woman in front of my neighborhood park who only speaks Zapotec and seems very suspicious of me. It's the re-use part of this cycle that's proving the most entertaining.

digging deeper

I'm loving our third year here in Oaxaca, because we are slowly exploring different corners of the state. Our earlier trip to Juchitan, where we saw the Muxe vela, began with a catholic mass with the cross-dressers in attendance. My favorite part was seeing their signs painted on silk flags that they leaned against the church. There were images of a person half man and half woman and another of a man dressed in full traditional Isthmus regalia.

Steve and my dad had another adventure last weekend. They made the 5-hour trip to Huautla and sought out Ines, a shaman who lives near the village's Casa de Cultura. She leads ceremonies with the region's famous mushrooms. She also sings, chants, burns incense and speaks the indigenous language of Mazteco in an altar room set up for this purpose.

My friend Lauren introduced me to a couple jewels within the city of Oaxaca, including the red plush couches at the Teatro Macedonia Alcala's cafe bar. The scene is lovely and bohemian--I feel like I'm in an Audrey Hepburn movie when I'm there. And the margaritas are 35 pesos.

Then there's my to-do list for new places opening in town. La Jicara is at the top of the list. My friend Nina told me about this place. It is a restaurant as well as a lefty/indie bookshop. Steve dropped by and said the place is filled with handmade and hand bound publications with stenciled and screen printed covers. My mind immediately flies to the projects I could do within such a medium.

Other adventures I want to try: the Santiago Apoala region of glyphs, caves and a waterfall; the funky new tiny restaurant that opened next to the Art Center in San Agustin Etla; the soon-to-open Cafe Morocco near Parque Conzatti; the Sunday bicycle ride from the Alameda; and watching a big lucha libre match in a stadium setting.

What I'm learning is that, if you have the patience and the desire, you can discover Oaxaca's subterranean beauties. I am looking forward to showing off our finds to the next round of visitors.

On the edge of a new year

Firecrackers are popping outside, and the kids sleep soundly through it. That's something I'm phenomenally grateful for. I'm big on new year's resolutions and just resolutions in general. I think I resolve something new every week or so, just based on a person's casual suggestion or something I happen to see.

So it's more challenging to sort out what could be a meaningful resolution for 2010. I know I'd like to do more creative work, something to do with writing a piece about Jenny. But what's most on my mind is trying to live greener.

Oaxaca has a scary dry season, if you ask me, and it gets me worried about water and about resources in general. And my mind always drifts to garbage. So I've sourced out some biodegradable plastic bags that I carry with me in my purse. Whenever I'm shopping, here in Mexico, the kingdom of plastic bags for everything, I whip out my bio version and use it instead, and empty it out at home to reuse later. I've bought a few of my favorite vinyl market bags (though my Mexican students said it made me look like their grandmas) in various sizes, so I always have something to carry somewhere.

I also want to reduce our paper usage. We've made the switch to cloth napkins easily. I was worried because we have no dryer that keeping up with napkins would be too challenging, but napkins fit in any wash load and dry on the clothesline almost immediately. I've never used paper towels, but I've had to persuade the household to use the cloth rags I have around instead of paper.

Starting my compost pile was successful, thanks to my friend Sadie's guidance. I will boost it by expanding the number of pots in which I keep all the great veg and fruit scraps.

Someday soon, it will be planter boxes on the rooftop. I want to grow veggies, fruit and herbs. We have our rainwater catchment system for watering.

I'm always impressed with Oaxaca and Mexico in general because, despite the lack of infrastructure, people here get by on so much less consumption. In the whole green picture of things, it's the reduce part of the equation that matters the most. I posted this all more concisely on my Facebook status, vowing for less crapola in 2010. I'll be seeking out other methods for attaining this noble goal.

Expat Paranoia Sydrome Redux

A short piece I wrote on this very blog, "Expat Paranoia Syndrome," is the story of the month over at Expat Women. If you haven't read it yet, you can check it out on the website:

Expat Paranoia Syndrome

Moving to Oaxaca and then--

Moving to Oaxaca with kids was not a huge leap for me but realizing that we've been here over two years does startle me. I wonder if I start to take my surroundings for granted. We spend our days rushing Max to Colegio Teizcali and Geni to her new Waldorf school that she loves, then we work, get Max and Geni to after school things--when you get down to it, what's the difference between living here and living there?

For me, the difference is in the details, that much of it happens in Spanish, in buildings painted indigo or terracotta or orange, with graffiti and agua fresca everywhere.

I've framed my week around certain rituals I dearly love. There is the organic market at Xochimilco, where I get my torta with wild greens, Coloradito mole sauce and cactus, and a chai and a tejate on the side, because who can choose? There are my weekends at the Casa de Cultura, listening to children practicing indigenous dances and classical music. Our Friday morning breakfast date at Itanoni, a restaurant dedicated to maintaining biodiverse species of corn, sparks many happy conversations between me and Steve. The markets, the revolutionaries, the wrestling posters, the chuggy buses, the cacti, the calendas, the kiss on the cheek from neighbors and friends--it's all part of my walks to pay the bills or pick up tamales.

Our third year here, and I've found I work a little too much and we don't venture to villages as frequently. The quantity of visitors has declined, and certain bureaucracies frustrate me more than fascinate me. But, through all of it, I equate Oaxaca with my destiny. There is no other place I know so messily beautiful, so profoundly moving, even in the smallest details, the brooding shapes of cloud shadows moving across the mountains or the sounds of brass bands in the distance.

turn and face the strange

Sometimes I think I'm walking around, living my normal life, but I find myself catching my breath as if I'd just been punched in the stomach. That's how I've felt these past couple weeks, doing the same whirl of parties and classes and work and adventures and, all the while, grinding my teeth and waking up with crashing headaches.

Geni's teacher at school does not seem to get her, does not seem to want her and, in fact, may actively dislike her. It's a shock when, the last two years, her teachers loved her deeply and she them, but I try to remember how very few teachers understood or even noticed me. It was part of my mission as a teacher, to look the traditionally overlooked students in the eye, to get to know them so I could recommend a book at the library to them or remember their birthdays.

Geni's just four, after all, this is preschool, it should all be games and songs and happiness. And the funny thing is I think it is, a lot of the time, happy days at school for Geni. Just not for her teacher. Geni has speech delays and motor skill delays. She's also mischievous, this I know. But can't her teacher see all the love she has, and the joy and the creativity? It sucks the air out of me to think about this.

I tell myself it is better to know the situation and move forward, so I am. I've found a lovely school for Geni and am hoping Geni and her teachers will find common ground.

I'm too tangled in emotions to dwell on this now but, someday, I'll write about this with some order and some insight, and hopefully I will sound wise instead of lost.

It's times like these where a sister could come in handy, to remind me not to sit in my soup and moan about it, to remember that it is Geni's perspective, not mine, that truly, deeply matters in situations like this.

It's a thin line between

Dia de los Muertos has come and gone. My third one here in Oaxaca, but it felt so different this time around. I understood more, for one thing, particularly some of the symbolism behind the altar objects and the stories behind the folkloric figures.

But there's something else, too, and it has to do with how terribly slow I am to feel part of what's around me. I watch and watch and definitely enjoy describing what I see and hear, but fully participating requires another leap.

So it was somewhere in the midst of the calenda processional with the brass band and my dear friend Liz hissing dance instructions to me that I realized I had become what I typically observe. We were jumping and spinning, with kids dressed as death, devils and skeletons winding around us, and I saw the cameras pointed at us.

Max noticed it, too, while playing and dancing at the San Felipe cemetery. "Mommy, the people took movies of me!"

There's always a kind of limbo in being here, stretched between two cultures, really not fully immersed in either one, and it takes something as beautiful and enveloping as Day of the Dead to make me forget to be an outsider.

Perhaps it was Alba welcoming me to sit at his ofrenda, a gravesite he and his family decorated with symbols representing fire, water, earth, the living and the dead, and the narrow lines between all of them. Maybe it was the red wine! The swirl of goings-on and the constant music and flowers and candles and copal incense began to feel like something out of a painting, or maybe a dream. It reminded me of an Aztec belief that life is just a dream and only upon death do we awake.

If so, I imagine Jenny on the other side of that thin line of flower petals, a line that a puff of wind or a bit of water could blur or break, even if it's just for one night.

Altared States

My favorite time of the year approaches--Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. I wrote "Altared States," a piece about Oaxaca's unique take on the holiday as well as some of the traditions around it. Go Galavanting, an online travel magazine geared toward women, published my article. Here's the link:

Altared States

Freak and Geek

Something I never get used to about living in Oaxaca is how I'm, in essence, a freak. I'm a big tall lady with a big Jewish afro and I'm not, you know, a quiet person. In my most insecure moments, I think every laugh on the street is a laugh at me. But now I've joined a health club and I stand out even more.

I'm the type who gets bright red in the face and sweats when I work out. To the point that people in the U.S. even noticed at times. In Mexico, where many people not only do not seem to sweat, but they also do not appear to mess up their hair or clothes while working out, I feel like a sweathog. Yeah, I'm Vinnie Barbarino or probably Arnold Horseshack and I'm strutting in saying "Hey, Mister Kot-ter," while everyone else comes and goes speaking of Michelangelo.

It's not like I have ever aimed to be cool or anything, but I wouldn't mind the advantage of occasionally being able to keep a low profile.

It hit an all-time low this morning when I went to Pilates. The Spanish instructions had me a half beat behind everyone else. I towered over everyone, all the more apparent with my bright red face. And then they brought out the medicine balls. Is that what they're called? Those giant exercise balls. We were supposed to balance ourselves supine across them in order to lift or stretch or exhale or inhale, but I found myself uncontrollably rolling around the room.

Panic rose in my throat, but I kept one goal in mind: just don't roll over anybody. If I can get through the class without flattening my classmates, I can call it a success. But will I ever go back?

Half as much

I've been busy since school started with serious party-hopping which means many pinatas to be broken. I've also had some great fun hanging with new friends such as Lauren, Sadie and Heather. The upswing in social activities means that we do way less village exploring and it means that we wind up at home between parties rather than out and about.

I'm a Cancer and I like hanging out at home, but something shook me the other day. I was walking out of my Osho meditation gathering and saw a house for rent. The house was on Jacobo Dalevuelta, right next to the house Steve and I rented when we lived here 12 years ago.

All of a sudden, I saw a different life unfold for me, where we lived in the centro as opposed to in a quiet-ish neighborhood. Where we'd be smack between two parks, across from a yoga center and right by a Friday tianguis. It would be the hubbub life, where you step outside your door to see what's going on. Twelve years ago, we would stand on our balcony and listen for the calenda processionals, dashing out to follow the brass band.

I felt myself longing for that version of Oaxaca. But does that version include kids and getting them up to Volcanes for school every day? Crossing bloody Ninos Heroes de Chapultepec--in essence, commuting? It seems silly to commute to take kids to school when Steve and I both work at home full time and enjoy the fact that we can take a back country road to the school and get there in 10 minutes. And that I can walk back in 25, stopping for a cactus smoothie breakfast on my favorite median strip.

I like rituals and checking in with neighborhood people, but I also like ambient buzz. Maybe we don't have enough of that around here?

Then I wondered if the old life I romanticize about includes the ability to have Jenny around. It reminds me of something I said to my grief group therapist a couple years ago, that I lead a second choice life with Jenny gone. I've reconciled that somewhat because I suspect many people don't even get their second choice life.

Then I remembered something Jenny said that I think I blogged about before. My dad once told us, "We Makofskys always have to work twice as hard for half as much." Jenny said, delighted, "Half as much! I love half as much. That's enough."

House of Cultcha

My lovely friend Nina introduced me to the wonders of La Casa de Cultura. Here is one thing Oaxaca's government seems to get right, funding an ornate building with arches around two inner courtyards, with creative arts classes going on in classrooms tucked behind the arches.

I took Max to his Introduction to Theater class there on Sunday, and spent the time listening to violinists practicing, watching ceramicists forming dinosaurs and catching glimpses of children practicing folkloric dances.

The experience made me think about the childhood I'd like Max and Geni to have, growing up pursuing creative endeavors at La Casa de Cultura. At one point, Max caught sight of a boy his age carrying a large canvas with the beginnings of an abstract painting. "That's what I want to do!" he insisted. And chess. And science. And origami. All of it amid the galleries and colonial architecture, the strains of songs and stomping feet, like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

Back to School Again

I've got the school supply list for Colegio Teizcali's preschool in front of me, which caused a certain amount of headaches. Here's the list, including some of my bad translations:

1 workbook with small squares
1 workbook with big squares
2 professional notebooks for drawing, each 100 pages
1 double-lined notebook in the style of Italian binding
2 pencils (for writing, not drawing)
2 boxes of wooden colored pencils (24 colors) tagged with name
1 plastic pencil box tagged with name
2 pairs of rounded point scissors
1 "migajon" eraser
1 toothbrush, little cup, two toothpastes with flavor (except mint), tagged
1 comb or brush for hair
1 industrial gray robe with long sleeves (for sale in "Boneterias) or "mandarla hacer") with the name embroidered
2 educational games for the class library (puzzles, blocks, memory, "chalupa" [Ed. note--isn't chalupa a dish at Taco Bell?]
1 box of 24 crayons
1 small towel for hand-cleaning
1 big shoebox with the top covered in ultramine shade paper with her name
For swimming: bathing suit, swim cap in the color indicated by the swim teacher, goggles, sandals, and towel or bathrobe

It makes you tired, doesn't it?

Welcome Back to Teizcali

We've begun our third year at Colegio Teizcali, so you would think we'd start to feel like old pros, but there is still the first day of school nervousness and confusion. The principal, maestro Daniel, sets up a path of flowers for children to follow as they enter school. I was pleased to see Geni chose not to throw herself down on the flowers and succumb to sobbing like she did last year. Instead, she just hid her head in my shoulder.

I was prepared for this year to feel different, like maybe I'd lose a little bit of the wide-eyed newcomer's wonder in things, but nothing beats having the kids at school all day to bring back some of that everything-is-new-again excitement. My walk home, past the bright concrete buildings, hidden gardens, rusty metal signs and women cooking on comals in doorways, was like meeting old friends. I stopped by my juice lady for a cactus smoothie but, due to my slow meanderings, got there only after she had run out. She promised me, "I'll set aside a green one for you tomorrow." Which she did.

I set to spending the day writing like a demon, finishing up an article on telenovelas--soap operas--for Aishti, and a bunch of web writing that wasn't nearly as interesting, all the while kicking myself: never plan a packed work day on the first day the kids are back in school. The first week, really, because you need to be flaky.

Geni's teacher at Colegio Teizcali is Maestra Alma, a teacher so wonderful that Steve was inspired to say, "She just might be as good a teacher as you are." I think she might be better...a bit more patient than I ever was. Max has Maestra Clara, a teacher who earned fame for transforming her classroom into a haunted house last year. We can only hope for such grand permutations this year.

But I believe the highlight of all the changes and the returns this week has to be what happened today. We discovered another neighborhood street market. Nothing pleases me more than a tianguis, an open-air Mexican market that extends for blocks upon blocks.

This market, in the Infonavit neighborhood, had many of the standards--a couple ladies ladling tejate, my favorite drink; booths of piratas or bootleg DVDs and CDs; the newly-popular Indian clothing puestos; croc knockoffs; and Tokidoki-like purses of Japanese cartoon characters. There were a few surprises as well, such as a crepe stand, a manicure booth, a waxing booth, modern paintings, a guy selling exotic leafy plants out of the back of his pickup truck, and a practical joke and magic trick stand.

It was a Fellini movie moment as the man at the magic stand did trick after sleight of hand to advertise his wares. We oohed and aahed and purchased three for Camillo's birthday present, and then Max got a container of moisturizing cream with a fake snake coiled inside, ready to spring up at any sucker who took up Max on his offer of hand cream.

The magician puffed on fake cigarettes packed with talcum powder and I felt the market watching us watch him. Who gets to be this lucky?

Boolean Operators & Pippi Longstocking vs. Ikea

Sometimes I forget how interesting and odd that sister of mine was. Luckily, I have the Barnard Zine Library and Jenna the librarian to remind me. She has just posted Jenny's graphic organizer, "Boolean Operators & Pippi Longstocking vs. Ikea," from an old issue of "Have You Seen the Dog Latley?".

We've both always been very big on Venn.

You Know You're a Sister When

My friend Carole introduced me to a website called The Sister Project. There' a writing exercise on there, where you finish the phrase, "You know you're a sister when..." I like this exercise, because it reminds me that I still get to be a sister, even though Jenny's gone.

when you appropriate her memories, not being able to distinguish if something happened to you or to her.

when you have someone to fill in the blanks of your random associations. I called Jenny once and said, "What is the word I'm trying to remember? The one that the book Me and the Terrible Two was all about?" She didn't have to skip a beat. "Nepotism."

when you don't have to think about what you're saying.

when half your clothes are actually hers, and vice versa.

when you dream about her and all the world of having her comes back to you like it is just there waiting for you, if you could just summon it up at will.

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.

Jenny Makofsky's cartoon "The Beats" on view

One of Jenny's standout ongoing contributions to our old zine 'Have You Seen the Dog Lately?" was her comic "The Beats". The strip followed Bart and Beulah Beat, two beatnik best friends who made observations about philosophy, pop culture and pop tarts, all in beat-speak. Anyway, one of Jenny's best strips, "Post-Monsterism", is now posted on the website of the Barnard Zine Library. Get your "Beats" fix on:

Post-Monsterism

Pacific Northwest Heyday

Welcome to my first blog post as a 42-year-old. It is not the highpoint of my trip al norte, what with it being 3am and my balancing my laptop on my knees as I type in the bathroom of the Medford Motel 6. But the past week in the Pacific Northwest has held many highlights:

*Stopping at Granzella's free olive bar on the way up
*Eggplant burger at Gepetto's in Ashland
*Berry-picking at Sauvie Island
*Walking Alberta Street
*Hanging with Jen and meeting baby Marley at Wilshire Park
*Dancing at the NIA studio with Megs
*Playing in the water area at the Children's Museum with Max and Geni
*Aladdin's twice for veggie Mediterranean
*The all green paintings show at the vegan shoe store
*Singing "The Night Chicago Died" in honor of Jenny at The Alibi Tiki Lounge with Mary Lou and Meg
*The Stella meet and greet for Max
*Playing Frogger at Ground Kontrol with Steve, Max, Geni and Meg
*Powell's with my mom, Steve and the kids
*Seeing J.R.'s new paintings
*Hiking to the top of Multnomah Falls with Max
*Chilling for four hours in Alberta Park, watching Max and Geni swim and make friends
*Indian sides and talking love, sex, marriage and babies with the Stephanies
*Explaining to my friend why she might want to have sex with her boyfriend before breaking up with him
*The water and light show at the Enchanted Forest
*To come: a morning playing in Lithia Park along the creek

Go Moto

One of the advantages of our strange location in Oaxaca (not quite in the center of things, not officially the municipality of Oaxaca) is that we live near moto-taxi country. Motos run on the back roads only, because taxistas have licenses for the main roads.

A typical moto consists of a motorcycle front with a little roofed cart attached to the back. Usually no doors. The windshield sports a nickname, possibly quite descriptive and sometimes in English, such as the man with the "Night of the 1,000 Loves" moto-taxi last week who asked for a Spanish translation of the nickname and then laughed delightedly.

When the car is broken (often), we grab a moto to get the kids to school, joining the legions of mommies and daddies hauling babies, backpacks and market bags into these lightweight taxis.

Paying for a moto is a fixed price affair, 5 pesos per person, although you never know what happens with kids. Some throw in the nena for free and others go for half price.

Since the motos have to stick to a pretty defined, limited area, the routes do not vary widely. I used to go into a long description of where Colegio Teizcali was located before a friend was kind enough to point out that all I have to tell the moto-taxista is that I want to go to "la posta", which, I believe, is the large post located on a corner across from the school. To get back home, rather than awkwardly trying to pronounce Rio Quiyotepec and then trying to direct us there, all I have to say is "a la antenna", which is a giant antenna structure two blocks from our house.

Moto-taxistas are big on swerving. They like to turn off the engine and coast down hills. They hook up CD players, Ipods and flashing lights to pimp their rides. They are often young, maybe pre-driving age, and there is a healthy portion of women operating them.

When we ride moto-taxis, my kids become puppies with their tongues flying out of their mouths in the open breeze. Every bump, ditch and turn is up for speculation--will we make it?--and conversation--we made it! Graffiti is brighter, the air a little less diesel-tinged and the markets something to avoid rather than to dive into. Whenever we take a moto up to Colegio Teizcali, the kids tumble out laughing and thrilled, like we just got off a roller coaster. And me, the one gripping onto Geni to keep her from jumping for joy, holding the backpacks between my knees so they don't get lost as we sail over a speed bump, trying to grab onto the driver's unbolted seat to hold us all in place, I love it all dearly, too.