Oaxaca

Sorry I haven't been posting lately. The end of the semester was a little crazy with finals and final projects but I ended up doing pretty well and my Spanish has improved tremendously. May 1-5 we had a little break from school for Mexico's Labor Day and Cinco de Mayo in Puebla, where the battle took place. I went to Oaxaca (4 1/2 hours from Puebla) with two other girls from Penn State. We left on Thursday and spent the entire day walking around and just exploring the city. It is one of the more tourist cities in Mexico. I went to Santo Domingo, a cathedral that took about 200 years to build. It is huge and there are little museums in each of the rooms. We went into the church, which is completely covered in gold and gold plating. We stayed at a youth hostel where people from alll over the world stay and met people from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary. On Friday we did an all day tour of famous places in Oaxaca. We started at Tula, the widest tree in the world, then went on to see how the wool rugs are made. It was amazing because it is completely from scratch and the colors are made from natural materials, not chemicals. We then went onto Mitla, ruins of the Aztecs and Hierve el Agua, petrified waterfalls. Finally we went to see how Tequila and Mezcla is made at a factory. The picture with the horse is interesting because that is how they grind the material. On Saturday, we went to the largest market in Mexico. I put up pictures of the fruits and vegetables they sell because it is all over. The people are also indigenous so they speak indigenous languages, not only Spanish that we couldn't understand. We came back on Saturday night and on Sunday, I went to the final Puebla soccer game of the season.