University Contacts In Beijing?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son Josh Goetz, 33, who has been a chef in Manhattan New York for the last five years has accepted a position opening a new restaurant in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing China. He starts the third week of June 2006…in one week. His wife Amy is currently teaching history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. At the end of the term she will join Josh in Beijing. She would like to know if anyone has any university contacts in Beijing that would be useful to her in either getting employment or just making friends.

Thank you

Mexican Cumbia Dancing

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I had forgotten how much fun it is to dance to Mexican music! I think I am a Mexican trapped in a gringo body! Last Friday, Gerardo and his mom, Socorroo, invited me, a few of her friends, Michael, a charming very long-haired young guy from LA who is staying with the family while he studies English, Chin, a young guy from San Francisco but originally from Taiwan, an Australian couple who will be moving to one of the apartments in my building and a few others to go dancing with her at El Pescador at 510 Miguel Cabrera St…only a couple blocks from my apartment. Two bands play the club…one up and one down. The one up was a kind of Mexican cumbia band with a drum pad, an incredible singer, a bass guitar and electronic keyboard. We started at 4pm and after many drinks, including the local Mescal and some finger food delicioso, we closed up the place at 10:30 when everyone drifted off to other clubs.

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Chin and one of Gerardo’s mom’s friends.

Chin was really cute. His face was red all night…blushing from all the attention he was getting from the middle-aged Mexican women in the group who were having great fun dancing in their very suggestive way…especially when we formed a circle putting each person inside by turns! Chin will never be the same after Mexico!

I was sitting next to the Australian woman who I thought was Mexican. After some time I finally turned to her to greet her in Spanish. She laughed a great laugh as she answered me in English! In past lives her husband was a heavy metal rocker and his hearing is nearly gone so he is now playing Mexican music. His wife is also in the music business where they met and married two years ago. They are a hoot as many Australians are! It will be fun to have them in the apartment building. But don’t get a TV, her husband warned me…you’ll just be tempted to listen to English!

After the club closed, Gerardo’s mom and I joined Gerardo and his classmates who were having farewell drinks for their visiting law professor from Mexico City at an upscale place called El Pichon north of the city. The group is studying to be tour guides and I had a rather interesting conversation with a twenty-something young guy sitting next to me who wanted to know all the terms for making love. Why is it that some middle aged American women want to be with young Mexican guys in Mexico, he asked. This information was new to me. Some tour guide he is going to make, I thought.

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Two of the girls in the tour guide class.

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Law professor and Socorro in earnest conversation.

Attempting a conversation in Spanish with the law professor, I learned a fine distinction between words. We were talking about the coyotes who take Mexican migrants across the border to work. I mistakenly called them ciyotes with a long “i”. Puzzled, he finally figured out I was refering to coyotes with a long “o”. He laughed and told me that, ironically, a ciyote is the sole of the foot (or shoe). A coyote is an animal…and also what the curriers are called. You never forget words that are corrected on-the-spot.

This Mexico gig is going to be alright, I thought at the end of the night. But going to have to figure out an excuse for turning down drinks in this country!

A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son, Josh, the little weasel, asked me what it felt like to be living alone in Oaxaca. It got me to thinking. Then I picked up a book at Sharon’s apartment entitled “A field Guide To Getting Lost,” a book written by a woman in San Francisco. It reminded me of a blog entry I wrote one thoughtful day in Bangkok. Here it is for those of you who missed it.

June 12 2005

Perfect Memories
“What A Perfect Day…It’s Such A Perfect Day…And Then We Go Home.”

Have been re-reading a book that I have been dragging around with me for the last year. Pico Iyer can set my imagination afire like no other travel writer. One of his pieces reminds me of the fall of 2003 when I was traveling alone down the coast of Viet Nam. Imagine all the people sharing all the world: I was riding behind Mr. Binh, my kind motorcycle taxi driver, and after three days on the bike my rear-end was numb. He takes me to a small food stall by the side of the road leading out of a little town on the South China Sea, where we wave down a local kamazake minibus that will careen down Highway 1 to Hue. The bus is crammed full of Vietnamese one on top of the other so I sit on some rice sacks until someone gets off and I, the older one, am graciously allowed to have the emptied seat. A couple of giggling girls offer to share a small sweet tangerine with me.

The driver had very long hair-possibly in his 50’s-with a pocked and scarred face…signs of a life lived on the edge. This guy is feeling powerful and narrowly misses oncoming overloaded trucks leaning at odd angles. He is having a great time and I am breathless waiting for my life to end. Suddenly when he throws a dirty towel to the back of the van and it lands in my face he looks back with a grin to see if I am alright. Gasping, I return his thumbs up with a laugh.

“Travel the World and the Seven Seas…Everybody’s Looking For Something. Some of them want to use you�some of them want to abuse you.” For Pico, the best kind of traveling is when you are searching for something you never find. “The physical aspect of travel is for me,” he says “the least interesting…what really draws me is the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of everything I know, into the shadows of what I don’t know and may never will. We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension…” he goes on to say. “I fall through the gratings of the conscious mind and into a place that observes a different kind of logic.” Transcendence… and pure Pico.

“Nobody told me there would be days like these! Strange Days Indeed.”

El Pochote Market & Cinema

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North and east from my apartment on Fiallo St., through the Zocolo, under tents and guy-wires, I walked to meet my new friend, Sharon, at an organic market called El Pochote, just north and east of Templo Santo Domingo. It had rained hard the night before and on the way I got drenched with at least a bucket of water. I looked back to see where the water came from and saw a woman poking a stick upward to release the water collected on top of a plastic tent. As I looked at her, she seemed to bear a silent look of terror on her face. She’s afraid of “susto,” I thought…afraid I would caste an evil spell on her. But that was just my interpretation, of course, having had very limited experience with health care for Zapotec and Mixtec migrants in Oregon. Unhappily, I continued on.

The market is very small and no one seemed to know where it was except a western-looking guy with an eastern European accent carrying some books. So an hour late, I finally caught Sharon leaving the market. We walked across the street to a bakery and bought some deep-fried peppers stuffed with chicken, nuts and I don’t know what else but it was fantastic…juicy and the flavors just kept coming and coming. Then she took me to see her roof-top apartment where, as a master gardener, she will raise plants and herbs. Nearby we visited the the Oaxaca Cultural Center that offers free art, music and photography classes within a beautiful old nunnery. I loved the feeling inside…children making art, practicing the piano…

Then we returned to the market where I bought some lead-free Mexican kitchen pottery for my apartment. We shared some mole enchiladas and a tostada “sandwich” and then watched part of the International Indigenous Film Festival (on extremely uncomfortable seats) that is being held at the Cine Pochote at the market site. Exhausted, we trudged home.

The next day Sharon visited me to see my apartment and then walked east to the nearby Mercado 20 de Noviembre where I bought a plastic shopping bag, some grapes, green beans and some perfectly formed green onions and cilantro to make salsa. Sharon was tired and getting a cold so she left for home, while I stopped and had a bowl of delicious menudo (tripe soup) before leaving.

Sharon says she will soon go with me to Mercado Abastos, so huge she says I can easily get lost, to the Women Artesans Of The Regions of Oaxaca cooperative for shopping and will take me to her favorite coffee shop.

When I returned to my apartment Gerardo’s cousin who lives downstairs, was delivering a set of T Fal cook-ware, some glass mixing bowls and a big bottle of purified water. I had only emailed Gerardo asking for those things that morning! Incidentally everyone drinks bottled water here. A young guy from Texas sitting next to me on the plane to Houston had been at the University of Oregon delivering a talk on toxicology. He told me the water here was full of arsenic. Incidentally, he said the water in the Willamette River in Oregon has a high level of arsenic also.

Hector, Sharon’s apartment manager, told her about a very good curandera (healer) so this week we will visit her and have a healing, sauna and massage.

Meanwhile, Gerardo, who wants to get a masters in tourism, has offered to drive me to nearby villages while we practice 30 minutes English for him and 30 minutes Spanish for me.

Later, checking email, I excitedly discovered that my old friend, Patricia Gutierrez, who married a Mexican national and lately moved to Mexico, will be driving here next week with her husband “to give me a hug” and get her mail that I brought from Oregon.

Someone else in an email asked if I thought the next president, at the upcoming election, will be good for Mexico. I know nothing yet about Mexican politics, and have to search out some good sources of information.

I have been making open pot “sheepherder’s coffee, in my new T Fal french “milk pot” like my dad used to make in sheep camp. I had forgotten how good it can be. (Whatever is a milk pot?!) But I need to find some coffee filters for my new coffee pot. People in Mexico drink Nescafe. Ugh! Never got used to it even after visiting Asia off and on for nearly four years. Also, I am having a hard time remembering to put TP in the basket instead of flushing it…

Now if I could just learn to use the buses!

Oaxaca City

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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After three weeks in Salem sorting through 40 years of junk…one pile for St. Vincent de Paul, one pile for the dump, one pile to sell at the Assistance League and the rest in boxes to be stored in the basement until the house is rented out again…I took off for Oaxaca Mexico leaving Bob with the house.

Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs – the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography. The nearby city of Oaxaca, which is built on a grid pattern, is a good example of Spanish colonial town planning. The solidity and volume of the city’s buildings show that they were adapted to the earthquake-prone region in which these architectural gems were constructed. Oaxaca City is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Monsoon season here for the next couple months…hot and humid but not as bad as Thailand…rains buckets several times a day then sun comes out.

Houston airport is huge and I nearly missed my plane connection. No problem getting off the plane here…small plane from Houston configured with two rows on one side and one row on the other). 32 pesos or about $3.00 into the city from the airport on the shuttle.

Oaxaca City, pronounced “wahaca,” is generally referred to as Oaxaca and that is the way addresses read…Oaxaca, Oaxaca Mexico. The Zocolo (central plaza) and the streets for blocks around it are closed from traffic due to a teacher’s Oaxaca State union strike. DSC00616.JPG

Teachers are here from every region. They are camped out in pop tents and under plastic tarps…just sitting with piles of belongings and food. There is a big inequality of teacher’s pay…they get anywhere from 50 pesos to 600 pesos a day. (about ten pesos to dollar). Here is one brushing her teeth. brushing teeth.jpg

But Gerardo (apartment manager) said many of the teachers are under- educated and the strike is bad for the city. Someone said the unions are very powerful here…teachers are forced by the unions to sit in the streets or they won’t get union benefits. Teachers still receive full pay even though they are striking. Kids are the losers. The government apparently isn’t listening. Heard last night that they took over the airport and all the planes are grounded. So guess I got in just in time.

The city is charming…two story buildings…some very colorful. Outsides often are drab but inside the outer gates the interiors are beautiful. The whole of the Centro is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

My apartment is a two story building with four apartments inside an outer building. I have a key to the outer “portal” and key to an upstairs apartment. When we arrived the carpenters were literally installing the kitchen cupboards…shavings and dirt and tools everywhere. Good thing I stayed in the hostel the first night. The 5-bed hostel room was clean and lovely (Paulina Youth Hostel) but hot as hell and stuffy…apartment much better. Free breakfast was great. So Gerardo took me to his house where his mom fixed coffee. They have had over 200 guests in the last ten years…showed me a picture of the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton who stayed with them for several weeks while studying Spanish. His mom has a cooking school on a patio outside the kitchen. Patio walls painted indigo blue and yellow. Then Gerardo took me to a supermarket to get ingredients for his mom. Then he took me with him to tour the Ethno Botanical Garden. After the tour I ran into a woman about my age, Sharon, who sat across from me on the plane. She has just moved here from Connecticut. She had earlier worked for the City of San Francisco for 25 years. She also lived in Veracruz for three years and is fluent in Spanish. She will be a good friend. We are meeting at a market Sat morning. Then Gerardo and I went back to his house where we feasted on yellow mole that his mom made for us. A young guy from CA staying with them and who is studying Spanish joined us as well as a German woman in her 30’s who is here studying Spanish for the 3rd time. Gerardo’s mom and she and I are going out next Friday to a bar to listen to salsa music. Gerardo, 25, is defending his bachelors thesis on human resources on tuesday.

When we got back to the apartment it was finished, clean with huge vase of flowers on kitchen table. I couldn’t believe it!

But the beds are hard as a rock…was really sore this morning. I miss Lyn’s bed…it was perfect. Going to have to get some foam or something! Kitchen pretty sparsley outfitted…about like Greg’s! 🙂 But I do have a brand new blender, juicer, coffee pot and fan. Wish I had some of the stuff from Azalea St. DSC00658.JPG

Glad I brought my down pillows…pillows here lumpy and flat as a pancake. DSC00662.JPG

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Went shopping at the supermarket last night at 8…finished at 10 and took a taxi home in the slogging rain. Most stuff had unrecognizable labels. Places here don’t cater to tourists like in Asia. I am realizing how comfortable I had become getting around in Asia…not so confident here…but went out walking today to get my bearings and then went to Sam’s Club (like Costco) in a taxi.

Lost my credit cards twice and found them again…not good for the nervous system. Tried to buy a sim card for Thai phone but it didn’t work…didn’t work in US phone either.

Unpacked already…extra bedroom has two twin beds waiting for my son Greg and his friends…and anyone else who wants to come. Wifi works great. Bought a bottle of wine and a wine glass…guess I’ll burn some sage and celebrate.

House Cats In Las Vegas

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Flew From Thailand to Las Vegas the end of April. Then flew youngest son, Josh, who is between jobs, in from NYC to spend a week with oldest son Greg and I. After Bangkok and NYC, we just wanted peace and quiet. Just hung out in Greg’s new home…didn’t even go down to the strip. I was in my glory with the two progeny.

Then Greg’s friend, Mike, drove in from Phoenix with a car full of all his belongings. Josh returned to NYC and Mike and I hung out some more. House cats, Greg called us.

HI Sukhumvit Hostel

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Just so you don’t think I drowned in the Sangkren waters of Thailand, I spent the next few days in a great new 38 bed hostel called HI Sukhumvit in an upscale Bangkok neighborhood about 50 yards down Sukhumvit 38 from the Thong Lo Skytrain station. Dorm rooms with 4, 6 or 8 beds go for 300 baht or about $7 with A/C…a real bargain in this city of 10 million. Two bedrooms are available as is a single room for $500 baht. Phit, the manager and owner who is a recent graduate of Kasetsart University, will take good care of you. I can’t recommend this new, clean charming place high enough. It doesn’t even feel like a hostel but rather a home with DIY cooking, laundry and internet. Tel (66) 2391-9338 or email sukhumvit@tyha.org or find the link on http://www.tyha.org/HI Sukhumvit.html. Every night the Night Food Market vendors set up their stands just yards away along Suk 38 offering great Thai food. And next door is an upscale bakery and restaurant in a traditional Thai setting called “FACE” for that special evening out.

On April 24 I flew out of Bangkok to LAX on China Air and then to Las Vegas to spend some welcome time with my oldest son…as far away from the heat and humidity of the hot season in Thailand as I could get!

Emails From Leila

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WOW what a city. BANGKOK is alive. It is New year for them amd they celebrate with water. The streets are alive with people walking arround with water pistols and clay. Everyome is om thr street. You goota srr it to belirve it. I a, tryimg hard to stay dry. I a, im a pub lookimg out the door. Free intermet here too. The ,usic is nom stop. The people have beem doimg this for 3 days. I arrived here on Khao San Rd this mormimg 5 a, om bus from Laos. This key pad is worm out amd I a,guessing the keys. I am mot drumk. Love you all Leila

Eumice get in here. The city is alive. You would love it. Wear a bra. Pleasr come Leila. Hree internet here im pub. Ill check soom. leila

I groan. Leila is on Kao San Road where all the backpackers stay. I don’t know if I can take any more of this! I am 62. She is only 50!

Songkran Water Festival

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Day before yesterday was New Years in Lao. Yesterday was New Years in Thailand, although the celebration continues for several days in these countries. We get it again! Leila took a cheap bus to Kao San Road while I flew on Lao Air…which the U.S. state department forbids their employees to fly on, I might add.

A German guy sat next to me who is based in Vientiane but developing cooperatives all over Asia. He is on his way back to Germany for Easter week. If you want to write, he said, visit Monyghenda in NW Cambodia. He is a former monk who went to the US for a degree and has started an organization called “Buddhism For Development” in Battambong, Cambodia. Oh how I wish!

Pulling into Sukhumvit 22 I was very glad I only had to go from the taxi to the front door of the guesthouse (Bourbon St.) Meanwhile kids spilling water from the Skytrain ramps onto unsuspecting pedestrians below and even more kids hosing people from the sidewalks. This morning on my way down to breakfast, a young farang was at the reception desk with a water gun. “Not finished,” I asked. “Yes, I’m finished…this is for self-defense,” he asserted.

Feels good to just chill out and cat-nap in my room today.

Tuk Tuk Tour

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After the Lao Cotton Company party, Villa, the driver, took a nap in his tuk tuk while we rested in our room. Later that night we toured the city under the lights.

Villa, it turns out, is not just a tuk tuk driver. His other job is finding unexploded ordinances that had been dumped onto Lao by the millions during the Viet Nam War by CIA pilots dressed in T-Shirts and shorts. Of course at the time Nixon insisted we weren’t in Lao or Cambodia during the war. We weren’t…officially. But ask any Lao whether we were and you will get your answer. Before any new thing can be constructed…like a new dam that is being built now in the south of Lao, unexploded bombs have to be found before people get their bodies blown to bits. This will be going on for years and years to come.

Villa’s father fought in the war against the French and he was quite knowledgable about his country’s history. “As long as we are not disturbed by any other country we will be able to develop economically,” he says. “We are at peace now, he adds and I think the future looks good.” I agree.

I spent two days on this trip trying to find the old neighborhood in the city center where I had stayed two years ago and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t recognize anything. It turns out the streets have been paved, street lights put up and new businesses put up by the dozens!