The first time I take Emmanuel’s picture, he is too thrilled for words.

He is four.  His mother, an older brother, younger brother, and younger sister live next door to Paulina.  His mother is expecting another baby.

Emmanuel, however, has adopted Conan’s parents, Paulina and Arturo (Conan’s step-dad.)

Emmanel started just spending time there, when he was younger.  Hanging out with Arturo in the store that Paulina owns, below where they live.

He watches for a while.  Just hangs out.  At some point, he begins to climb into Arturo’s lap, and falls asleep.  When it’s time for bed, Arturo would carry him home.

I don’t have a good picture of Arturo downloaded yet, but here’s a picture of them together with Lucia.

Arturo has a good aura, and a gentle way with him.  Paulina is warm and nurturing.

After a while, Emmanuel begins to ask for food.

When Arturo goes away for the day to collect and sell coconuts, Emmanuel sometimes goes with him.  They get home late, but Emmanuel’s mother doesn’t mind.

When people talk about Emmanuel’s mother, there is a lot of tsking.  I won’t do that here.  I don’t know her, but I’d guess that, for whatever reason, she’s overwhelmed and not able to take care of her kids as well as they need, probably not as well as she’d like to.

Emmanuel is welcome with Arturo and Paulina.  Paulina feeds him and makes him take a bath and go to bed at a reasonable time, and when he falls and bangs his head really hard, she takes him to the hospital.

Arturo is a role model.  Emmanuel wants to grow up to be just like Arturo.  He plans to work with him when he’s old enough, and refers to him as his papa.

One day, Emmanuel picks up a knife and is trying to cut something, Paulina takes the knife from him, saying, “Do you want to end up like Arturo?” referring to the work accident that left Arturo missing a finger.

“Si!” says Emmanuel passionately, “Si!  I want to be just like Arturo,” as Paolina gently takes the knife from him and deftly cuts the bread he was hacking away at.

Paolina gets him an activity  book and he carefully writes the numbers and does the elementary math with great pleasure.  He doesn’t like school, he says, but he’s thrilled with the coloring book I bring him.

Little by little, he spends more and more time at Paolina’s house.

One day, he brings a little bag of clothes over.  He uses the kind of bag potato chips come in.

Then another.

It takes him 3 trips with his little bag, but he brings all his clothes to Paolina’s house and stows them under the bed he sleeps in.

That night, when Paolina tells him, “It’s time to take a bath, go home and get your clothes,”  he says, “No ~ look!!  I have them right here already.”

He begins sleeping in an extra room.  Paulina talks to his mother, who is ok with it.

Here he is with us at the shrine of  Juquila, holding the flower I bought to leave there.

With Julia and Conan at the shrine.

He calls Conan “mi hermano,” my brother.  He was a tad worried about Lucia at first, but is content now that he’s sure he won’t lose his place in the sun, and greets her happily in the morning – Lu-tia!”  which amuses everyone.

Here he is when we go to visit some people – a man who does some wonderful wookwork, which I’ll show you later.  Emmanuel finds a little tricycle and rides around happily.

Here, he decides to insert himself into the picture I’m taking at the shrine.

But by the end of the trip, I’ve taken so many pictures of him that when I pull my camera out again, he flops on the hammock and moans a bit, as if to say, “Really?  Again?”  Just like my kids used to do.

Resilient children.  Children who are born into difficult situations and manage to thrive anyhow.

Often, they have a feeling, early in life, that they don’t belong in their family.  And they have at least one other adult in their life who is a positive influence, who is there for them.

Emmanuel certainly has both of those.  As he told Paulina, having successfully transferred his belongings to her house, “Soy arriva!”

“I have arrived.”

We go to visit the Reforma’s – friends of Paulina and Arturo, Conan’s mom and step-dad.

The Senor Reforma and his wife live near a place called Rio Grande, out in the country.  We visit a lagoon while we’re there, and spend time relaxing at the beach, and it is an adventure in many ways, but just one story for now.

{As I write this, I’m waiting for someone else to wake up so they can find the matches so I can light the stove and make coffee.  The matches are usually in a lovely little bowl by the stove – but not this morning.  And my best searching skills didn’t uncover them.  I know there are more somewhere, I just don’t know where.}

Anyhow, we visit the Reforma’s, where we eat the best fish ever, and have a wonderful time.  The first night, we stay in this hotel that’s very nice.  The people who own it are friends of Arturo and Senor Reforma, and the rooms are very nice, and there’s coffee in the morning, and it’s lovely.

But, it’s about a 15 minute drive from the Reforma’s house.  And there’s another hotel that is just up the road from them.  So the second night, we leave the Reforma’s place, full and happy and tired, and decide maybe we want to stay at the closer hotel.

So we stop and check it out.  In many ways it’s beautiful.  And it has air conditioning.  But it’s so close to the lagoon that there are lots of mosquitoes and other flying creatures, and we decide, no, better to go back to the first hotel.

So we make that drive – this is part of the road:

I’m taking these from the car window as we drive along – slowly.  Not that night, because it was dark then.  Um, obviously.

Anyhow, Arturo, and people who live there, know when the water’s too high to cross by certain rocks at either end ~ if they’re covered, you can’t pass.

So it’s perfectly safe, and it’s just a small part of the road, and really beautiful.  This isn’t at night either, it’s just real shady in the middle part.

Back at the hotel, they’re all just about ready for bed themselves, I think, but they get up and make sure our rooms are ready, and we all have a beer to celebrate, and go to bed.

I take a shower, which feels wonderful even though it’s cold water.  It’s very hot in Rio Grande.  When we left Juquila it was maybe 65 or 70 degrees, but an hour later, it’s at least 90.  Quite suddenly, like passing through a doorway and WHOOSH, it’s hot.

So I’ve been living in 90 degrees for two days now, and am getting used to it, but a cold shower is a wonderful thing.  I go to bed feeling safe and cozy and content.

The next morning, I get up and dressed, and am trying to do something with my hair {don’t ask me why, it’s really hopeless.  Fortunately, the water is soft, so it’s not as bad as it could be.}

Anyhow, I brought a curling brush, and am pretending there’s some point to using it, when I hear this odd noise.  It’s a kind of ~ thumping?

I look over, and it’s ~ it’s some kind of CREATURE crawling across the floor.  Ir’s so big, I can hear it walking.

OH MY GOSH!!  WHAT IS THAT?

I don’t know what it is!  It might be ~ is it a huge crab?  Maybe, I guess it could be.  I don’t know!

As I watch, it makes its way across the room and begins to climb the wall.

Do crabs climb like that?  What if it’s not a crab?  Omigod, what if it’s a spider?  Dee said that Alix had asked him if I’d had any trouble with spiders ~ what if this is it?  My first one!! Omigod.

I scoot over to the door, keeping my eye on the creature, and look out in the hallway, but no one’s up yet.

Omigod, omigod.  What am I going to do now?  It’s all the way up in the corner of the ceiling, by the curtains.  It’ll probably disappear into some crevice or something, and no one will even believe it happened.

No, wait, I’ll take a picture of it!  Then they’ll believe me!

So I grab my camera and shoot this:

Do you see it?  It’s up in the corner.  I didn’t crop it down because I wanted you to have the perspective of the curtains and the wall.  But it’s huge.

So I think, no it’s too big for a spider.  But  I’ve seen some huge spiders out in the country in my Mom’s basement, what if it’s some kind of killer Mexican spider?  What if it starts a web by swinging down from there, and OMIGOD, what will I do then???

And I go back out in the hall, and this time, there’s a woman out there, she’s knocking gently at someone’s door, apparently trying to wake them up.  I think at first she’s one of the owners, but she really wasn’t, she was just a neighbor.

At that point, I’m not even worried about it, I approach her and start trying to tell her about the killer creature in my room.

She thinks maybe I want a tortilla?

I’m like “No, No, non tortilla, es ~ es ~ AH!”  And I make the universal sign for “Wait,” and rush back to my room for my phone camera.  Triumphantly, I show her the picture of the killer creature on my ceiling, which at that point is crawling behind the curtains.

“Donde?”  She says, which ~ aha ~ I know means “where is it?”  And I gesture and she follows me and of course it’s disappeared behind the curtain.

Fearlessly, she moves the curtains, and finds it clinging to the back of the curtain.  Smiling, she peels him off and shows him to me.

I know, it’s weird lighting, but there it is.  It is, indeed, a crab, not a killer creature at all.  And I was so scared!

Well, not totally scared.  Just a little anxious.  Right?

And thanks to the nice lady, I’m totally reassured.  By that time, the owners are up, and I give up on my hair and go downstairs to find coffee.

People are awake here too now ~ that means matches… and coffee!  Yay!

Early morning in Oaxaca City, I’m drinking a really pretty cappucino in a clear glass cup and watching the city wake up. People walk briskly, dressed mostly in jeans and a wide variety of tops. Sweaters, hoodies and boots are not unusual.

I wander around the square a little, careful to stay within sight of my hotel. Drink another cappuccino in another cafe. Finally, connect with Conan and Luis (in the middle of a third cappuccino) collect my luggage, and load Luis’s SUV.

Then we go shopping. A big store first, like a Meiers. There is a Walmart,  but Conan says things are more expensive there. Julia has sent a list, Luis has a list, we shop and shop.

Then a department store, we look at cribs and other things, Luis picks out some clothes for his infant daughter. More stuff to load in the SUV.

Lunch at a little cafe type place ~ not sure what it was, but it was tasty.

Finally, we go pick up the flowers Luis’ mother had asked him to get. When we are through loading, the SUV looks like this:

And like this:

And at last, we are on the road to Juquila.

It’s off there in the mountains somewhere…

Juquila is a town of about 5,000 people. It’s a tourist town, not for foreigner so much as for Mexican people. The Virgin appeared to some children here, and continues to perform miracles. So people who have a request for a miracle make a pilgramage to Juquila, where there’s a special church and shrine, all of which I’ll talk more about later.

According to google maps it’s about 100 miles and takes about 2 and a half hours to get from Oaxaca City to Juquila.  This is a joke.

Even on a map, here’s what the last part of the road looks like.

All those little jagged edges are curves, many of them hairpin turns.

There are special obstacles too – REDUCTOR is a warning for the speed bump.  And they’re frequent.

Luis, experienced on this road, knows exactly where each one is ~ even the ones that aren’t marked.  This is a very good thing.

I wasn’t able to catch a picture of the two dogs, trotting merrily down the middle of the road, but that’ll slow you up a bit. And the ones who sleep in the road wait until the last moment to get out of the way. As soon as we pass, they go back and lie down in the same spot, as if to say, “This really is my road, you know.”

So it is a five, five and a half hour drive, for sure. On a good run, we hit 30 or 40 kilometers an hour, about 20 or 25 miles an hour. Google maps, hmpf.

We pass “wild” horses and cows and an occasional pig.

We pass small town after small town.

We stop often.

We stop for food or drinks.

Or to use the bathrooms. Conan keeps a close eye on me, which is good. Culture shock abounds.

The bathrooms cost three pesos.

In fairness, I remember when public toilets were pay toilets in Italy, although I don’t know if they still are. And I have a vague recollection of some bathrooms in department stores here that cost a dime to enter the stall. So I don’t feel too superior or anything, this will change here in time, I’m sure.

But. I don’t have any small change, so I have to ask Conan for the three pesos. I enter, with only a little fumbling, head to the stall ~ oh, wait, no toilet paper. I move to the next one ~ no, no toilet paper in any of them. Not even a roll where it would be.

I go back to see if there’s a roll of paper towels by the sink, and I see it. Toilet paper – for a peso.

Laughing, I call to Conan, on the other side of the barrier, “Can I get another peso from you, please?”

Luis hears me, and says, with a grin, “What for ~ does it cost two pesos to get back out? Welcome to Oaxaca!”

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In reality, I have to say that I haven’t felt like I was getting victimized by tourist stuff ~ or not any more than you would anywhere else.  Probably less…