Going on Oaxac-about...

The adventure begins!

Everything is packed, instructions are printed off, and I will be boarding in hours. The first challenge for this month-long journey will be the six-hour layover in the Benito Juarez airport (MEX) tonight/tomorrow morning. I am very happy that I am saving money on indirect flights to Oaxaca; however, my nerves are strained just thinking of the "interesting friends" I will meet from 1am to 7am in an international airport.

A tremendous weight will be lifted off my shoulders when I finally land in Oaxaca. Then I will only face awkward first-encounters with my institute mates and the cultural-wizards whom I will be learning from over the next four weeks.

As a graduate student summer-scholar for the NEH Institute:Spotlight on Oaxaca, Summer 2011, I am expected to complete all the readings and coursework that my fellow professional educators will be expected to complete. Thus, it is not as if I will have a lack of stuff to tide me over in the airport.
Even more, I will need to continue my pre-research for the research project I will be conducting in the two weeks following the institute.

With every letter I type, I actualize (with much trepidation) the catharsis surrounding my choice to apply for, and accept, both the institute and the research grant as a first-year Master's graduate student. This will most likely be the greatest experience of my life, besides meeting my beautiful and creative wife, and, later, my precocious daughter.

Quick note on the format of this blog, the blog-matting... er... blog-struction... uh... these web-ulations (the methodological topicalities that I hope to ambulate about):
I plan to post messages and images from my time in Mexico, as well as wrestle with questions about "Mexican" history and culture. I will most likely end a posting with questions (regularly facetious) regarding Colonial Native and Latin American history, archaeology, and anthropology.

Initial question:
Was there ever a pre-Colonial Latin American travel depot, and what sort of "time-wasters" could a Nahua, Nuu Savi, Beni Zaa have done to stay awake while he/she waited for their next journey?