Vamos a Oaxaca

February 2 – today

We made it! There have been so many fun moments, lots of gratitude for the ability to be here, a few tears, plenty of delicious food, and steady progress with our Spanish.

Our first week we jumped immediately into searching for a long-term place to live. The apartment hunting process was challenging to do from the US. Seeing places in person, as well as getting to know the city helped tremendously in figuring out where we wanted to be. We found our apartment after visiting a different apartment we weren’t excited about due to location, and meandering back to our Airbnb past a “se renta (for rent)” sign with a phone number. We texted the number and got an immediate response that that apartment was not available but we could see another the next day. It happened to be in a neighborhood we loved walking through, near a park where we frequently sat to watch all the activity, and only 15 minutes from our language school. It seemed too good to be true! We toured an apartment that is the landlady Señora Teresa’s auxiliary apartment, complete with her wedding photo, lace tablecloth, delicate glassware, ceramic wolves and angels, and pictures of Jesus and Mary on the walls. It was a temporary stay before our apartment was vacated. After discussing the terms of the lease entirely in Spanish with the significant assistance of Google translate, we signed a four month lease and made plans to move in the following week.

We gave ourselves a week to rest, learn, and recover from months of planning, stress, and moving. In Anicka’s case, it was also the perfect time to get sick, be miserable for a few days, take antibiotics, and bounce back ready to move in to our new apartment, start Spanish classes, and start doing telehealth private practice. Our language school is called the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, and it came highly recommended by several friends. Anicka tested into A2.1, a level above basic, and Shey tested into A2.2, the next level up. We quickly learned the routine of 1.5 hours of Spanish learning and practice in the classroom, a 10 minute break, another 1.5 hours of Spanish learning and practice, another 10 minute break, then an hour of conversation in the courtyard/garden surrounding the school. Every transition is communicated by a hand-rung bell. We loved our teachers, both freshly graduated and very engaging. They were excellent and made us enjoy going every day, despite feeling saturated like wet sponges by the end. We also came to know many of our classmates well and connected closely with several of them. (Hi Katherine and Davis!) It was refreshing to have more structure to our lives and people to see and talk to, other than each other. Who knew being together 24/7 in an unfamiliar environment would have its challenges… but also its joys!

There has been a lot to learn outside of the basic ability to speak: how to turn on the water heater to be able to take a hot shower, how do we clean this tomato so it’s safe to eat, which car has the right of way in the street, how to wash our clothes, where to get filtered water, why a man frequently walks through our neighborhood pushing what looks like a smoking chimney and blowing what sounds like a train whistle (we still haven’t figured that one out). Every day is something new, which is both exciting and exhausting.

We have plans to travel to the Pacific coast and explore costal towns, with possibly some mountain town stops along the way. We have tickets to a concert, Jessie y Joy, on April 1st. We’re inviting everyone we know, which includes you if you’re reading this blog!, to come visit us!