el viaje largo

hello from belize where i now am once again. and guess what the only rain you see in this part of the world falls mainly in belize. perhaps something to do with it being an ex-english colony, it gets to have english weather too. as i write this i am listening to my new pan pipe south american music cd. it is by a group of mexican musicians who were performing on saturday in oaxaca and i just love andean pan pipe music so i had to buy it. some people think it's cheesy and unsophisticated but i think those people are wrong. it has given me peru and bolivia nostalgia so i am now considering not working in mexico at all but going to south america again soon. on which topic, i have procured a job in a school in oaxaca, starting late january. i wasn't aware i had got the job until i was leaving and she said so we'll see you in january then. and i said oh right ok then. but the problem is you can't wear jeans at that school which although seemingly a minor point, to me is an issue. it is the berlitz language school, as in the people who also make the guide books. quite strict and too many children for my liking, i would rather teach adults in a less formal, ie jeans wearing, scenario. anyway watch this space. nice to know i have the job if i want it.

so friday was dia del virgen de guadalope, the patron saint of mexico. later that day we went back to the church we'd gone to earlier and seen the cute little children with painted moustaches on. there were thousands of people queuing up to go to mass. then there were fireworks and a little band playing. possibly the strangest mexican activity i have yet seen then took place. they had made little papier mache or suchlike sculptures of little bulls which they put on their heads and ran and twizzled around while fireworks on the little bull went off in all directions from their head. not the safest sport, or in fact spectator sport as a bit of firework flew off into the crowd and hit someone. but very amusing. then a huge firework sculpture went off too, with virgen del guadalope written on the top in fireworks. it swizzled around and generally was very entertaining.

saturday i went to some museums and galleries of which there are many in oaxaca. i also acquired some more books, the sandcastle by iris murdoch which is very good so far, and my first ever iris murdoch book. and also a book called the labyrinth of solitude by octavio paz, who is a mexican writer, it is essays on the nature of mexican people and their differences with for example north americans and other people. quite deep and wordy but very interesting. need to apply more than my usual brain power when reading it so consequently not getting through it very fast.

saturday evening me and my classmates milled around looking at various bits of music that were going on, and supposedly more fireworks though they didn't materialise. we watched my pan pipe band again which made me happy. we laughed at a man who was sitting all serious on a bench holding loads of helium balloons. i made jenny take a photo of him, it's on her blog you can go and see it. we wondered how many helium balloons it would take to lift a small child, say of 1 year old, off the ground. and obviously he would have to be attached to the ground at the other end otherwise it could be disastrous. we figured maybe around 1000, or maybe it would be easier instead to just fill the child with helium directly.

sunday i left my mother teresa house - mother and father teresa had by this point returned from visiting family in puebla. i suppose mother teresa would be mightily relieved at me leaving due to the huge amount of extra work it had created for her. i went to the bus station and got my 9am bus to villahermosa, a 13 hour journey, to the northeast. the first 5 hours or so were up and down mountains on very wiggly roads which made me feel sick. then it straightened out a bit and i managed to read my book for a bit. we stopped at a roadside restaurant where there was a little playground and 2 monkeys in a cage. i managed to look at them without having my usual phobic reaction and going all weird, so perhaps that one is cured now. i talked to a mexican man called tito who spoke very good english and had been hoping i was german so he could practise his german on me. we arrived around 10 and i hung out in villahermosa bus station and ate a sandwich while waiting for my next bus to chetumal on the belizean border. i got chatting to javier, a mexican man from veracruz. he had a bright orange jumper on and a baseball hat, for this reason i had though he was american and had started talking to him in english. he looked after my bags while i bought my sandwich, and helped me find my bus and generally was very sweet. he then took a photo of me with his phone and got my number and said he was now my friend in veracruz. which was nice if a bit over friendly, but this is how mexicans often are. it can be quite disconcerting for us reserved english people.

my next bus was non-eventful, i took some valium and slept soundly until we arrived around 9am. i then sat in chetumal bus station for a few hours and drank a coffee and read an international newspaper i had found. i read about the pound being equal to the euro and realised that the recession is really rather serious. i had thought the pickles household in england was typically over reacting by changing all the lightbulbs to energy efficient ones but it seemed that padre pepinillo was, as ever, one step ahead of the game.

i got my next bus which took me to belize city over the border. i had to pay a departure tax of 40 belize dollars, which is around 10 pounds. the canadian boy i met had only had to pay 20 belize dollars, i don't know why it varies but will investigate, perhaps they are more keen that english people stay so charge them more to leave? turned out the canadian boy's name was nelson lamb, which i think is on a par of funny name-ness with lucy pickles and i told him so. we travelled the last bit of my bus journey together and chatted about mexico and things. he had been studying for 5 months in puebla, and also hadn't seen any mexican wrestling. i finally arrived back in san ignacio at 5.30pm. has to be the longest bus journey i've ever done. which i don't mind too much in itself as it is cheap and in mexico at least, the buses are good quality. i only mind because i now have 4 bags to carry due to my 8kg of english grammar books from guzman. if i could throw these away i would but i will need them at some stage. i managed to throw away a few things i hadn't been using much which was cathartic, but i still definitely have far too much stuff. anyway, my clothes are once again rejoicing at being hung up in robert's house, and it is nice to be back in belize actually, despite the rain. last night we had dinner with marius, a photographer from lithuania who is making a photo book of belize with robert flying him around to take the photos. marius is the rudest person i've ever met and i told him so.

today i washed my clothes and tidied up and am now about to eat some spaghetti and watch a film.