Making salsa all day, dancing salsa all night

P1020104, originally uploaded by kitty424.

It's my last month in Oaxaca and I'm living out my idiot dream. I didn't actually think it was going to happen. I kept telling people about my plans - but mostly as a way of practicing the simple future tense in Spanish (voy a tratar encontrar trabajo en un restaurante....blahblahblah) - but didn't think I'd actually do it. Then I got back to Oaxaca and realized that I had nothing to do. And I had told enough people, and that I should actually try to make it happen. Really, how many times during the last four years of doing CAD (still too pretty for it) did I dream about being someone's bitch in the kitchen? Bastante!

After a couple of non-starters (and one run-around that perhaps deserves its own entry), I got a call back from Los Danzantes - an upscale place in the historical center - that agreed to take free labor in exchange for the potential media coverage should this wanna-be writer actually get a story published about the experience.

So I find myself in a kitchen (dad: "I thought three degrees from MIT was a guarantee that you'd never have to wear a hairnet"), on my feet, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm chopping cebollin, slicing something called xoxo, stuffing flors de calabaza with goat cheese and blanched avocado leaf, rolling out dough for cream cheese and quince marmalade empanadas, boiling the filling for jamaica and quesillo tacos, liquefying pounds of chile peppers for salsa, battering shrimp in coconut, deep-frying strips of tortilla. And I'm loving it. There's something so liberating about turning off your brain and chiffonading cilantro. Of course, the brain is not completely off. It's composing a great coming-of-age novel about my self-actualization. Something along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love. One that doesn't start with a complete emotional breakdown and mostly involves Eating. It ends with business school rather than a a religious awakening. But aaaaaanyway.

I'm one of the oldest people in this kitchen. The head chef, a year out of a culinary institute in Puebla, is 24. The others are even younger. Ricardo is 21 and works weekends when he's not in culinary school. His spiky, gelled hair pokes through his hairnet. Carlos, who speaks the undecipherable, slurred Spanish of Veracruz, dropping most of his S's and R's constantly tells me about my beautiful eyes. All morning we belt along with a station that plays "Vete Ya" by Alacranes Musical about 10 times a day.

It's so completely different from home cooking, where I can dilly dally, drink a glass or three of wine, and my friends (excluding one Danny) will still be impressed if whatever I made does not come out exactly as I had planned it. My parents are worried that I'll "find myself" as a kitchen prep cook, rather than getting this out of my system. I'm loving it right now, but I'm also pretty sure that I'm too pretty for this as well. Taking the long view, an 8 hour day on my feet and without facebook is not for me either.

At night, I'm taking salsa lessons with Ney, the gayest straight guy ever ("It's okay. Tell your boyfriend I'm gay"). Ney teaches salsa full time, and enters (and wins) big time competitions in Mexico. He's an incredible lead. Two nights ago Ney and I went to a dance club after the lesson. The place was almost completely empty. I ordered a beer, and a little later asked the waiter to put on some salsa. He looked confused, but left, and later came back with a bottle of Valentina salsa and a spoon. Tomar, traer, tocar? I guess they sound close...

Other nights, my friend Jorge and I walk around the streets of rainy Oaxaca - sometimes for hours in search of the perfect molotes (little deep fried pockets of spicy potatoey goodness. not unlike Indian samosas). Jorge speaks a perfectly enunciated Spanish, telling stories about how he illegally snuck into the US and lived in Tennessee for a year in a barn with a bunch of other Mexicans, working in a car factory and missing salsa dancing, or about how as a police photographer he would go out to burn fields of marijuana outside of the city.

Jorge is a dance instructor too. He teaches on Thursdays and Fridays at Candela, a popular salsa club in town. Jorge dances a callejero Cubano style - his joyful, carefree, informal street style is contrary to Ney's formal academy line style.

Thursday night are gringa/zocalo boy nights at Candela. It's full of blonde tourists and zocalo boys - burros en primavera who know smooth phrases such as, 'you have beautiful eye' or 'you dance very nice.' On Thursday night, I feel like one of the better dancers at the club. On the weekends, it's a different scene. The dance floor is packed with amazing dancers, and a 6-piece salsa band plays popular dance tunes.

Meaningful conclusion goes here.