SPELLING BEE

Time

BY BEA WESTERBERG

“Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world”. Gustave Flaubert I am asking myself how I am ever going to write about my 7 day trip (2 days coming and going on planes and 5 day on the ground) to Oaxaca, Mexico. I will group events together rather than by a single day. I could probably fill this whole newspaper up with stories, if I could even remember them all. I am sure it will take at least several weeks to share some of my memories.

The beginning of the story goes back a few years ago when my very good Spanish speaking niece, Arre, met and fell in love with a very handsome young man from a mountain town in Mexico.

I knew this was going to be a trip of many firsts, but we started off on a first right here in the Twin Cities. The trip people are Sister Shelly, Nieces Arre and Danielle and me. (The 5th trip person nephew-in-law Emma, is already in his home town of Oaxaca, Mexico, for 2 weeks and will join us once we arrive). We were going to have my GF Margaret transport us early in the morning. Arre found a great deal at one of the hotels close to the airport which gave us a BIG room, breakfast, take us to and from the airport and our car had permission to stay parked in their lot during travel time. Instead of getting up in the early morning hours on everyones’ part, we were almost at the airport.

As I was still getting over my leg problem, Danielle “Amazoned” me a wonderful walker that folded up and also had a seat. (This will be prove to be a total game changer to get me around). Because of that, our transport to the airport was able to let us off as regular leaving passengers instead of some underground place that required a lot of walking. We zoomed through check in but the walker got a lot of checking also. We flew Delta and it was almost a 5 hour trip to Mexico City, Mexico and then we had a 4 hour layover to Oaxaca. That was good as this is a very large airport and time operates different here. People also wait to get on the plane a lot different but we got to Oaxaca seeing an amazing nighttime sky. Danielle had arranged for the car rental and that was a process. Emma’s whole family came to the airport to meet us! They do not speak English so Arre was a very busy talker but it all worked out and we got to sense that they were wonderful people. To say we were tired would be putting it mildly. It was hard to get the lay of the land being dark but city lights told us everything seemed to be packed together with very narrow one way streets, LOTS of cars of all kinds and shapes and scooters that found their way through every inch of space.

Can you guess that parking would be a problem in this city? Emma found a special off street parking business just steps away from our Airbnb that Arre reserved for us. Picture a one car garage door with a door for people to enter. One of the keys in the handful of keys opened the door to WOW! A big entryway with a metal gate to get to the open air patio just ahead of us! On the first floor was a huge living room, dining room and a large bedroom that became mine. Another area just off the patio was the kitchen area that had everything one would need for a kitchen and the all important safe water to drink. (We did find out that everything except the refrigerator needed to be plugged in to use.)This building was probably many hundred years old and had been saved and reworked for modern use. Very thick walls from earth and straw are the basic material used in this type of building. On the stairs going up to the 3 bedrooms and patio on the second floor was a door that we opened and found that the small area had a sink and a number of steps down was a toilet! (Arre had given us lessons on what to do and what not to do and it included that one does not flush the toilet paper you use, it goes in the basket next to the toilet.) At this rate I probably WILL have to buy the whole paper space. I did sleep well on the first floor and the story from second floor will continue next week.