Oaxaca Trip - DAY 3

Day 3 – Wednesday October 26

Time of Start: 5:30am

Agenda:

·      San Bartolo Coyotepec – Black Pottery

·      Santo Domingo Culutral Center & Church

·      Santa Maria – El Tule (oldest tree in the world)

On this day, I couldn’t calculate time very well and I ended up getting up about 45 minutes before I had to, but at least I got a couple of the research papers graded. Our first stop was to the black pottery place. This is the only place in Mexico where you can find real black pottery. The rest of it is made up. There is a mine about 4k away that the men (women still can’t go in there) go to to get the clay. They bring it back and the whole family works on creating and designing black pottery. When we got there we broke into two groups, my group got to shop first. It was pretty neat. It was unbelievable what was there and how inexpensive it all was. If I could bring more home, I would have! I had to keep thinking about how I would get it all home to MN too! So here are a lot of … I would have like to buy you this…

This would have been for Ed and Connie

This would have been for Emmy or Maddie

I also found this vase I was going to get my Mom, and then it dawned on me that it is the same shape vase that I got her from the hand blown place in Italy… turns out I like that style, so I was going to buy it for me, but then I remembered how much other stuff I was buying.

Here is a little video of this lady making the pottery. When we walked back to watch her make the pottery I was kind of expecting a really nice pottery machine thing. All she had was two bowls on top of each other that she spun around. Pretty amazing!!

Here are some still shots of the pottery making process. 

First your not sure what she's making

Then it gets a lip

Your thinking a cool bowl or vase

In the end she makes a water picture

She is showing us how she makes the designs in each piece.

The finished product!

After the black pottery we went to the Santo Domingo Church.  SO BREATH TAKING!!! I don’t know if I could pay attention to mass in there because there was just so much to look at. Everything was covered in gold! It amazes for how much money and work to keep it all perfect Mexicans put into their churches, it’s really something else! We sat in the church for a while, it was nice to sit there and look at the beauty and talk to God in one of his houses. Here are some pictures of inside the church.

This is the ceiling

The main alter

A little closer

That is the main door you walk into

The gold detail was just amazing!

She was beautiful

Next, we went to the Santo Domingo Culture Center. There were some really neat things in there. There was one room that had a lot of things that they found in Tomb 7 from Monte Alban. It was neat to have been there, been to the site of that tomb and look at the artifacts. They even have part of one of the skulls they had in there.

This used to be party of the old Abbey

A view of the garden

The beautiful mountains in the background

Our last big stop for the day was to El Tule – the oldest tree in the world! This tree is over 2000 years old! It was a REALLY big tree. Mama Sheri – I was wondering how many fairies probably live in there? 

Doesn't it kind of look like I'm at DisneyWorld? There is the tree, look how small the church next to it on the right looks

Tree stats!

Unbelievable!

I bet a lot of fairies live up there!

The town of Santa Maria was one of the cutest towns I’ve been in. It was real simple. They had the huge tree, a little church next to the tree and behind that was the little market. There was even a little building that had dancing going on inside. I think half the town was there… it was just so neat. Of course all the older men were chanting for the guerra (the blonde) to come inside and dance… I walked away very fast so sorry there is no picture of them all dancing.

The church next to the tree

Adrian takes better pictures than I do, so I had to include his too!

Me and Geo at El Tule

It was a great place to end the day with! We went back ot the hotel, had a great dinner and then I had a lot of grading to do in these notebooks they were working on while we were there. I love staying up late to grade! 

End of Day: 12:15am