Oaxaca se despierta

Last night, I received the Facebook message from my mother: "You haven't updated your blog in a while. We'd like to know what you're doing in Oaxaca."

So, perhaps the last thing my mom wants to hear is that I stayed out terribly late drinking and talking with friends at various bars last night. I got about three hours of sleep, and woke up to climb a massive hill with a cross on top with two of my friends.

I tend to be a bit of a masochist (what University of Chicago student isn't?), so I was determined to run with my friends after my late night out. Somehow, I felt energized, buzzed on my lack of sleep and eager anticipation for my early-morning adventure. I left the house around seven in the morning, and I walked by my favorite tree in all of Oaxaca: a big tree with flowers like bluebells that fall down and carpet the road with perrywinkle buds. The dawn tinted the sky a pinkish gray, and clouds hung over the mountains in the distance.

I met Ben and Madeleine at a street corner to run together. We jogged up a street with a steep incline, the cross at the top of the hill beckoning us. Once we reached a certain point, it was too rocky to keep running, so we climbed up the dry, dusty hill, careful not to slip on the crumbling rocks. It reminded me of climbing up a hill in Spain with my friend Paige to see the windmills that inspired Cervantes's famous scene in Don Quixote. (I wonder if there's something innate in human beings that make us want to climb up tall hills and mountains? And construct buildings and monuments there?) At one point, we had to duck between barbed wires in a fence running around the hill, and we passed a small, decrepit house with a beautiful porch. (If ever I become a rich person, I will renovate this house and live there so that I can see the lights of the city twinkle at the night, and the sun bathe the streets with light each morning.)

Everything felt glorious once we (finally) reached the cross at the very top; we paused to look out at the city waking up below us. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, car horns blared, and a sound like a trumpet or some kind of brass instrument kept blasting out at random intervals. The colorful houses managed to peek out brightly from the gray blur of smog that hung over the city, all framed and enclosed by mountains. Ben broke our reverent, awe-struck silence to comment, "Well, here's Oaxaca, in all of its dingy glory." For me, the city is more glorious than dingy; I'm going to miss these dusty roads and barking stray dogs and colorful streets and blossoming trees.