We arrived a few minutes late, because we relied on the address in Lonely Planet, rather than that in Chef Oscar’s e-mail. It appears that in the not-too-distant past he has moved his restaurant to a location closer to the tourist crowds, and Lonely Planet hadn’t yet gotten word of that. There was one other student, a young Australian doctor named Caroline. She was spending six months wandering around the Americas (her brother lives in Peru) before starting her specialization work in obstetrics and gynecology.
Oscar first gave us some options for what we would make. We eventually agreed on chicken in mole negro (Caroline especially wanted to do that, though Mary Joy thought it would be nice to try something different after having had that so often on this trip), squash flower soup, plantain fritters and rose-flavored ice cream.
Then he took us to the neighborhood market,
where he picked up the ingredients and he showed us various fruits, vegetables, etc., that we wouldn’t find in Minnesota, or even Melbourne, Australia. When we got back to Casa Crespo, we were given white aprons and put right to work.It was interesting, and Mary Joy said that the mole we made was the best she had ever tasted, though, to her everlasting shame, the tortilla she made ended up a mess. On the whole, it was a good experience, ending in a nice meal. Some of the few negative reviews on Tripadvisor complained that Oscar was detached, distant and distracted by constant cell-phone interruptions. This was largely true of our class. Once he was on the phone while we were frying mole ingredients in oil, so I started to cook the squash seeds, but as soon as he noticed that, he called his assistant in to stop it, while continuing his phone conversation—the seeds should be dry-roasted, or they’ll take on too much oil. He didn’t eat with us, but said goodbye to us while we were eating, because he had to be somewhere else.
That afternoon, Mary Joy got in her shopping, doing most of it at the women's cooperative store, MORA, though she also got some alebrijes at the Labastida street market, from the son of sculptor Fabiano Lopez, of the alebrije-making village, San Martin Tilcajete. A taxi driver was there with young Sr. Lopez, and laughed at my being loaded down with all Mary Joy's loot. "Do you know what Mexican men are like?" he joked. "Son como burros," I replied. They're like burros. He laughed. "Es lo mismo en los Estados Unidos," I added. It's the same in the United States.
We went back to the B&B for a short rest,
then went down to the Cathedral for that evening’s 
concert. Since we were early, we wandered 
through the Alameda and Zocolo. The amount of activity—vendors’ stalls, restaurants, clowns, shoeshine men, families making their evening paseo, even a marimba band, with couples dancing to its music—was almost exhausting. We went into the Cathedral, where we were met by a stunning sight—all the many tall columns in the church had been completely covered with lily bouquets, from floor to high ceiling. It apparently had to do with some festival the day before.After a wonderful concert by Cristina Garcia Banegas, we said goodbye to all the people we had met at the conference. The next day, most of them would go on an overnight trip even farther into the Mixteca Alta than we had gone on Saturday.
We just barely managed to get to La Biznaga restaurant just before ten, in time to order a light
meal of quesadillas and a salad. The restaurant has a reputation as a hip, imaginative, nouvelle cuisine place. It looked and sounded like the sort of place where young, sophisticated people would hang out, to see and be seen. Jazz or alternative folk music was playing in the background and the waiters had tee-shirts and spoke good American English. The menu was in large letters on a huge green slate hung on one wall. Our food was very good.This morning (Tuesday) we were up by six, and out to the taxi before six thirty. We had a little problem at the airport, in that the stamped tin Christmas ornaments that Mary Joy had bought as presents could not be carried into the cabin (possible weapons). So she had to rearrange things and gate-check her big backpack.
Once in Houston, the security line was very long, so it took us about 45 minutes to get through. We got some Chinese food from Panda Express. We had eaten there in the E terminal food court in 2005, when we had gone to Morelia, Mexico with our friend Ellen (there was, by the way, an organist from Morelia at the conference). Now we hurried to take this food over to Terminal B. However, two workers on the interterminal train line had been hit by a train, so the whole train system was shut down. We had to backtrack some in order to stand in line for a bus to Terminal B. We boarded our plane immediately, and only had to wait a short while for other passengers before taking off.
Weather in the Twin Cities wasn’t good. High winds had apparently closed several runways, so we circled for more than half an hour before being allowed to land. But now we’re home.
The trip was fun. We liked Oaxaca very much, met some enjoyable and interesting people, heard some good music, were honored in a wonderful village fiesta and did some Mexican cooking. We did very few of the required Oaxaca tourist things, but we had done all of those (except eat chapulines—fried grasshoppers) eight years ago.
Our bed and breakfast (Oaxaca Ollin) was very nice and well located. The owners (Jon McKinley and his wife, Judith Reyes) and staff were pleasant and helpful. The breakfasts were very good. There was even a swimming pool, which, unfortunately, we never had time to use. The standard Mexican things that take some getting used to are the need to use bottled or purified water for any drinking or even brushing of teeth, and the fact that most Mexican plumbing, like most Greek plumbing, can’t take toilet paper, so there are bins next to the toilet, sometimes covered and sometimes not. But we like Mexico a lot, nonetheless.
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