Two more weeks in Oaxaca and pig cheese

So, after Mexico City, we came back for two more weeks with our host families and lots of homework. The first week, we had our final in our Spanish conversation class and in the grammar class (both were kinda tough but not too bad). Also we had some essays and journals due in our field seminar classes. The following week was NGO week (where we visited three different NGOs and were required to interview one of the organizations of our choice. With all that to do, the two weeks seemed to fly by faster than I expected.

Even though the two weeks were full of homework and studying, I was able to spend some time with my friends and host family on the weekends. The first Saturday, I woke up early to spend the morning with my host mother (my host father had left for Mexico DF to visit with my host sister Pamela). Around 9.00 in the morning we headed out to the market to do some shopping for the week. It was really neat to watch my host mother interact with the vendors. The lady who sold us the vegetables had some advice for how to prepare certain foods that my host mother was interested in. They seemed to have built up a pretty good relationship because the lady had some fresh vegetables saved for my mother when she got there.

After the fruit and flower stands, we walked to the pork shop. Every part of the pig that you could imagine was there. There was bacon, pork, ham, salomi, pig head, and pig feet. Because I had told my host family about my bad experience with chicken feet, they wanted to show me that all animal feet wasn´t disgusting... so my host mom decided to buy some patitas del puerco (pig feet). They were sitting on a shelf inside the glass window and they looked like they were cut off around where the knee would be. To make them more bag handy, the lady took the three feet that we ordered and sliced them through a saw that you could find in an industrial tech classroom. All the while, I just kept trying not to think that I was going to have to eat them...

Once I secured the dismembered pig feet in our grocery bag, we saw a little boy order a piece of queso del puerco (pig cheese). I should have learned my lesson before, but like an idiot I asked her what it was. Thinking that I like to try everything, she asked me if I would like to eat some. It was a huge jello looking mass of brown with big white chunks of pig fat. The man cut a few slices about the width of turkey at thanksgiving and asked if I wanted any salsa. Despite my host mom saying that the salsa was pretty spicy, I asked for alot because I wanted to hide the taste of the pig fat. Unfortunately, I don´t think there is enough salsa in the whole world to cover the taste and texture of the pig fat. It was absolutely disgusting and I had to fight every urge I had to gag, just to be able to swallow the jello like pig fat.

Luckily, my host mom helped me finish the pig cheese and she bought some sweet bread to eat while we walked around downtown. We walked towards the main center of town and the cathedral Santo Domingo. I still hadn´t seen the inside and my host mother wanted to give me a tour. Unfortunatley, there was a wedding going on inside the church and they had a sign posted on the door that they didn´t want any uninivted guests to enter. The sign, however, did not seem to bother my host mom and we went into the church and sat in the back row. In a skirt and nice shirt, my host mother looked like she could have been invited, however, I was wearing jeans and a tank top and carrying the pig feet in my bag.

I was content to be sitting in the back of the church, watching the ceremony and listening to the music played by the orchestra. After about ten minutes of watching, my host mother asked if I liked the music. I told her that I loved listening to music (especially with violins and organs). I probably should have told her that I hated music because once I told her that I liked the music, she decided that I needed to see the choir. So, with the pig feet in my shoulder bag and the service still in progress, we marched up the side isle towards the front of the church to see the choir in the balcony. About four rows from the front, we stopped and turned around to look at the balcony as I tried to hide the bag of pig feet behing my host mother.

Eventually (after about a minute that felt like hours) we sat down in a side row and waited for the service to end. After the wedding party exited we followed the rest of the crowd out to the plaza where a live band was playing celebration music. There were two huge puppets (one of the bride and the other of the groom) that two people were propping up above their shoulders. The puppets were probably 15 ft tall and flopping around to the music. Also, there were 4 girls dressed in cultural outfits with flower baskets on their heads. It was a really fun and happy reunion after the wedding and we were able to watch the wedding party march down the street like a parade (I hope nobody recognized me as the girl with the pig feet who walked to the front of the church).

Later that afternoon, I met with my friend Jennie to make an apple pie for our friend Sarah´s 21st birthday. There were no pie crusts so we had to make it our of graham cracker crust. It ended up being a success and Sarah was very happy to have her apple pie (Jennie had emailed her mom for the recipe). After eating the pie, we went out to a bar as a group and enjoyed some live music under a starry sky. After a bit of time at the bar, we headed out for some salsa dancing. Even though most of us don´t really know what we were doing, we were lucky to find some guys who knew how to make us look like we had a realtive idea. We spent the rest of the night dancing and having fun with friends.