Oaxaca, Day 1

I got back from Oaxaca this morning. It has been a crazy few days. And there's no way I'm going to decompress it all in one post. So I'm going to make it into a series of posts.

First, an introduction. This is Mike:

Mike is the head of the missions committee at church, and he is the one who gave me the opportunity to go to Oaxaca. He also took almost all of the pictures that follow, so he's not going to appear in many more of them. I've known Mike (and his family) for several years, and I've spent time at Campus by the Sea at the family/faculty camp and a few other things here and there. But this is the first time that I've spent serious time with him. And what an amazing time it was.

But I need to back up a bit. This photo was snapped at around 10:45 PM, at the end of a typical Tuesday for me. What does that mean? It means I got up at around 7 AM, went to work, left work around 4 (which is actually a little earlier than usual), went to small group, and then after all of that, I went to Mike's place to ride over to the airport to begin the journey.

First stop: Check-in at the AeroMexico ticket counter. The lady behind the counter said something to me, and I had no idea what she said. That's going to happen a lot to me because I speak virtually no Spanish at all. But after asking her to repeat herself, she switched to English and we took care of business. The international terminal at the Las Vegas airport is fairly new, perhaps a year old or so. It's big, beautiful, and we flew through the security line with no problems. We spend some time just hanging out and chatting while we wait for our midnight flight.

The first leg of the trip went from Vegas to Mexico City, and that was about a 4 hour flight. A couple things about the flight:

• They served a light meal on the flight. It was a hot (steamed?) ham and cheese sandwich served with grapes and cracker peanuts (cacahuate japones). This surprised me for a couple reasons. The first is that it was literally a midnight snack. I was surprised that they would serve a meal at a time when I would have thought they would just let people get a couple hours of sleep. The second reason for the surprise is because I just wasn't expecting a meal. I fly Southwest almost exclusively because of where I travel. And Southwest doesn't do that.
• I had never heard of cracker peanuts. They're just peanuts with some sort of cracker shell on them.
• There was an odd moment when a woman suddenly screamed a jumped out of her seat and went behind it (she was in the emergency row where there were only two seats instead of three). I have no clue what happened. Maybe it was just a nightmare or something.

I probably only got about an hour of sleep (the time before the food was served) on that leg. Arriving at Mexico city gives me my first chance to experience going through customs. Hand them the form, hand them my passport, answer a question (that needed to be re-asked in English), stamp, stamp, done. The Mexican security system is amusing. It's like a little game. You push a button, and if it's green, you can just go through. But if it's red, then you go through some extra screening. I got green, so I have no idea what you go through for red.

We had a 2.5 hour layover in Mexico City, and so we just camped out in a waiting area just outside of the customs checkpoint. I might have dozed off for a few minutes there, but I don't know. We had to wait around for a while to get our gate number, but once it came through, we worked our way back up through security and to the gate. I wasn't really able to understand the announcements over the speakers, but the monitors contained enough information that we were fairly confident about where we needed to be and when. (See also "social cues" -- when people line up at your gate, you line up with them.)

The flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca was about an hour. Again, I probably fell asleep for part of it, but I'm not sure how much. Upon landing, we met Dave from Adventures in Life (AIL). He was the only white guy in the airport (besides Mike) which made him easy to spot. Before taking off, I went to the bathroom, and got my first introduction to life in Mexico. There was no running water in the airport. As I was leaving the bathroom, there were 50-gallon barrels of water and workers with what looked like 4-6 quart kitchen pots to "flush" the toilets for you.

We followed Dave into a taxi, and I got my second taste of life in Mexico. As Mike and I put on our seatbelts, Dave looks at us and says "How very American." Apparently, people don't wear seatbelts in Mexico, unless you're in the front seat, and only sometimes. (There's an important note here for if we bring minors on the mission trip, as the parents will need to know that a seatbelt simply may not be available. If they don't like that... then I guess the kid can't come.)

We ended up at the Hotel Casa Arnel, which was our home base for the entire trip. We dumped off our stuff, took a few minutes to gather ourselves, and headed off for breakfast. We ate at "Marco Polo":

Before going further, I need to note that the food culture is very important to Oaxaca. I talked with a former student who was born in Mexico, and her two pieces of advice to me were "Be careful" and "Enjoy the food." The latter definitely happened.

Here's a shot of the restaurant:

Dave ordered fruit with yogurt and some granola:

This is Mike's dish. I didn't note what it was, but it looks like scrambled eggs, some black beans, chips, and oaxacan cheese (similar to a queso fresco).

My dish: En tomatadas con tasajo. If my memory and notes are accurate, en tomatadas refers to the fact that the dish is served with a tomato sauce, and tasajo is the grilled beef on the left. Tasajo is the regional form of carne asada. On the right side of the dish, you can see some tortillas that have been folded over and topped with crema, cheese, and a ring of onion. I found the onions to be less pungent than white onions up here. It was actually a little bit sweet, and probably similar to a sweet onion (but I can't say that I've ever had a raw sweet onion, so I'm just guessing).

In addition, there was bread on the table (which you apparently pay for by the piece). I didn't have any of the one on the top left. The top right had some chocolate on the inside (you can see a tiny bit of it peeking out on the left), the bottom left was filled with a custard, and the bottom right is just bread. The basket underneath contained some more pastries, but we didn't get into those at all.

It was during this time that Dave gave us a history lesson about the area. Understanding the history is important to understanding the culture and the difficulties of ministry. Even though I run the risk of butchering the history by attempting to recount it, I think I need to do it anyway.

There are basically three religious categories: Catholic (which is both a cultural Catholicism and something that contains elements of idol worship), Baptist, and Pentacostal. Historically, the Baptists had a separatist theology, meaning that the successful Christian is someone who is completely separated from the culture-at-large. This comes from a very literal interpretation of passages such as "I come to turn man against his father" and "everyone will hate you because of me." This has led to a very ineffective witness because it is driven by conflict and divisiveness.

This runs contrary to a more "holistic" gospel, which is the approach that AIL takes. A good way to summarize their understanding is to look at the evangelistic ministry in Acts. We see the appeal to reason (when Paul debates in the synagogues), we see the role of personal testimony, but we also see that cultural expertise is important in order to connect with those who are not Christian. And it is in this third category that we see a real distinction in the various approaches to missions. I am of the belief (consistent with AIL) that the social capital you gain by getting to know and participating in the culture-at-large gives you the permission to speak about Jesus. Dave talked about how in some areas, Christians have tried to just drop in and tell the local communities how wrong they were, and that some of those people ended up getting killed. You don't have the right as an outside to just try to tell people they're wrong. You need to be welcomed in before you can effectively communicate the gospel.

There was also an important flash point in 2006 where the teachers union basically took over the rule of the entire city, but I really don't know how to characterize that in some way that is meaningful. It's important because this event shapes the current political climate in the town. You can read the wikipedia article you find by googling "2006 oaxaca protests" if you care to read more about it.

After breakfast, we wandered around town to just take in the sights.

The town feels like this:

Pictures of Santo Domingo Cathedral. In the second picture, you can see me looking straight up at the ceiling some 40-50 feet above me. The last picture is what I was looking at.

A rug:

Food and the market. Take a long, hard look at the second picture. Those aren't chiles. They're chapulines. (Okay, you can see *some* chiles in there. But you actually have to look for them.) What are chapulines? It's food. I'll let you look it up yourself. Yes, I ate some. I thought they tasted pretty good. They're crunchy with a little pop of flavor in the middle.

After walking probably 5-6 miles through the city, we returned to the hotel for a couple hours of rest. Mike and I both took a short nap. Then we went to dinner at a small restaurant near the American Consulate. We enjoyed tlayudas, which can be served folded over or open, depending on where you are and who is making it. These were closed. The first picture is Mike's tlayuda served with what I think is pork (cecina). In the second picture, you can see my tlayuda, which contained nopales (cactus), cheese, and chopped up meat (I can't remember which). There are some cucumbers and radishes (which were pretty much straight up), and a container of red sauce and green sauce. These types of sauces appeared all over the place, both in homes and restaurants. The white drink is a horchata (the flavor is more subtle than the flavor of horchata I've had here). Dave's drink is the red one, and that's a hibiscus tea. I had a sip, and it reminded me of a Chinese candy I had as a kid called "Haw Flakes." I've always thought of them as a plum candy even though they are made from the hawthorn berry.

We chatted late into the evening, which was time just developing rapport with each other and framing how the next couple days would be. Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel (getting back at around 9:30-10:00), and Mike and I went to bed. Both of us had only a couple hours of sleep each for a 36 hour day.

And that's where this post ends.