Wow, the past week has been our busiest and most exciting yet. We've had dancing classes and cooking classes. We've visited an ex-convent, a cathedral, two large markets, a museum, a textile shop, three cities outside of Oaxaca, and the largest (in terms of diameter and volume) tree on the earth, El Tule.

It's hard to communicate the amount of new and interesting things we've seen. I've sort of let it wash over me. A justified description of the landscape and of the flora and fauna alone, would require another blog entirely. In short, Oaxaca sits in the center of a valley that stretches out in three directions, surrounded by mountains. These mountains do not look so large from within the city until you realize that the city itself is already at 5,000 ft. In fact, Oaxaca state has 20 peaks over 10,000ft! It's a gorgeous place to drive through - very curvy roads however. This is how I lost my cookies in Ocotlán. Terrible roads, but ultimately it was worth the trip. 'Vale la pena'...'it's worth the pain' as they say here.

We didn't get the chance to post much because we've had so much to do, although I did post the slideshow of some photos from the tianguis (open-air market) at Ocotlán. These tianguises are held in most towns once a week. These are different from the regular street markets. They're more specifically indigenous. In fact the word tianguis means tarp in one or another indigenous language and of course there are many tarps tied taut between either side of the street for these markets. You’ve gotta be careful not to clothesline yourself as you walk through.

Speaking of indigenous languages, there are 16 of them spoken here in Oaxaca! The two most widely spoken are Zapotec and Mixtec. These languages are pre-columbian and sound nothing like Spanish. It's a bizarre and intriguing thing to hear while walking through the tianguis. Finally some confidence with spanish only to find out that we're going to need to learn 16 more languages to be able to communicate with everyone here. ¡Ay Ay Ay! Here's a youtube video that shows some of the many different indigenous languages of Mexico. The intro is a snippet of a classic Zapotec song.