Para siempre voy a recordar el miercoles, el 28 de septiembre, en mi mente.

My uncle lives down in Socal…kinda near the big ole fires. He opens his window at night and his smoke alarm goes off because there is smoke and ash everywhere. That would be a little odd
Sometimes I feel like that when I cross the freeway here on the way to school.

There are two groups that are down here right now. One is mine, there other is a group of 4 grad students that dont speak Spanish. Idiots. Well one of them went down to the coast last weekend for a last hurrah before she went home. She took a couple of friends, etc. They had a good weekend and all and their last night they went out dancing and drinking. A drunk local dude comes in and is being loud and obnoxious. The owner tells his it is a private party for foreigners, even though it is all mexicans. They dude comes back later even drunker and refuses to leave. The owner makes him leave. He comes back a while later, drunker, and with a gun. He stands in the doorway and shoots. He ended up shooting this girls friend and she watched him die in another friends arms. What a fun way to spend our last day in Mexico.

Made a friend. We have hung out a few times. She is trying to learn english, thus our friendship has a point to it. That sounded odd. Well anyways, we usually go out to eat and talk. It is fun. My spanish is better than her english and we dont get far in english, but she has only been studying for three months. I tried to explain the difference between “other” and “another.” I don´t think I would make a good teacher. I started to use tenses and phrases that I didnt know I could say. It was a good feeling.

Went up to Monte Alban finally. It was rad. We met up with the Archeology Director, he is out fucking teacher!, and rode down to a site away from the main plaza. Monte Alban is a huge ruins on a hill south 20 minutes south of Oaxaca. It is only about 15% excavated. We walked off the road a little ways and made out way to a open field covered with plants and a couple mounds surrounding it. We did a little project with mapping the site. It was sweet. The field was covered with these herbs that smell like lemons. Oh, and large spiders too. I watched a spider trap and kill a scorpion in its web. I was happy. Felipe and I were a team. And we explored some of the tumbs around the field. It was cool. Very cool. If you look closely there are still random artifacts lying around. After a couple hours there we headed back up to the main area of Monte Alban. These rest of the group went back to Oax and I stayed for a couple hours and explored the ruins. It was a friday and thus for some reason there were no tourists. I estimate about 20 tourists and the rest old Oaxacan men selling rocks. It was pretty trippy to sit on top of a pyramid and completate the universe. I enjoyed myself. Except in the musuem where they had childrens skulls from the sacrafices. We are going to do the same kinda of field work….but cooler in the coming weeks. There are about 10,000 sites in the state of Oaxaca alone. Most smaller, but still.

My mother is in China right now. I wish her the best and hope she comes back fluent. Or something. I want to go to China.

They just opened a Burger King a block away from the Zocalo here in Oaxaca. They tried for years to block McDonalds, sucessfully!!!!!, from the same place, but somehow Burger King snuck through. What a fucking same. They have gringoland south of Oaxaca with all the American chains, but downtown is basically free of them. Oh well. Inevitable.

Yo….I put some more pictures up if y´all are interested.