Margaret was studying abroad for the spring semester of 2014 (her junior year) in Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m sure you could ask her for much better detail, but here’s my attempt at explaining what she was doing; her school hooked her up with a program in Oaxaca at a university to study Mexican cooking and culture. This study was segmented by a few one-week house visits, where she would stay in a remote (in every meaning of the word) village with a host family to experience what their lives were like.

I had just gotten a new role with PG&E in the construction department and decided to visit her for a week. It’s a shame I don’t have more pictures of the trip, but we were enjoying the moment and frankly, taking pictures didn’t really strike me as an important thing to do at the time.

We booked a hostel in Oaxaca and hung out around the city for the week with multiple day trips to places around the city. It was great because I got to meet all of her friends she had made while there.

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Another cool thing was that this coincided with a Christian parade (couldn’t tell you the meaning of it), which we got to see:

Margaret and i have similar travel interests; seeing people and what everyday people’s lives are like rather than going to tourist destinations, which is why i was thrilled she told me that one of her host families wanted us to visit them. The plan for the day was to meet then at a market about 3 hours out of the city, buy a goat where we would catch a ride with them to their house and slaughter the goat in preparation for their son’s confirmation party the following day. If i were to guess, there were approximately 60 people in their village while the guest list for the confirmation party was about 200.

Anyways, here’s the goat story:

So Margaret and I walked through Oaxaca early morning to a bus stop where we would catch a bus to take us to the market to meet her host family. To no surprise, the bus was……full, but seeming to be full of the “can do” attitude, the bus continued to load well past its limit. Anyhow, nothing new there- that’s what bus rides are for.

Anyways, we head out of town and drive. We drove through smaller villages, then into open desert. I mean open desert…..for what seemed to be hours. All the while, I was beginning to understand what Montezuma’s revenge must have felt like to all those who were lucky enough to experience it prior to myself. After attempting to nudge the tightly-packed occupants next to me to get a slightly different sitting angle (which in my mind would solve all of my …..issues), I decided it was time. At this point, we were somewhere between really far and super far into barren desert, but when nature call you just need to answer. I hugged Margaret, told her to enjoy her day and I that I would find her….somewhere (we didn’t have cell phones) later that day. I pushed through the crowd to tell the bus driver “nessecito bajar ahora!”He dropped me off at what looked like a post-apocalyptic gas station where I did my thing, lowered a bucket into a well and flushed the toilet. Good as new, happy as a clam.

I walked out and went back to the road, which is where i found myself to be a Swedish guy in khaki shorts, sandals, and a polo shirt with no ride (bus had taken off of course), no cell phone and NO IDEA where the heck i was besides the set of every western horror movie. There’s two choices; hitch a ride back to the city where i could find the hostel OR continue to trip and find my damn sister. I knew (1) that she was visiting with a host family, and that (2) they were going to buy a goat. Feeling that “can do” attitude, I checked my wallet and started hitchhiking in the direction we were initially headed, doing my best to explain what was going on in hopes the universe would connect and they would know the exact goat……store(?) my sister was headed to.

by the way, if you don’t know how to say “goat” in Spanish, acting like a goat will get your to a sheep farm unless you catch it.

So I get in the first car and tell the story. the driver didn’t seem to share my humor at the situation after he heard I didn’t have a ton of money. He kicked me out of the car and took half my money. Back to hitchhiking in the Mexican desert I go! Luckily the second driver got me to some buildings before asking me to get out.

So now I’m standing at some buildings in the Mexican desert when a golf cart pulls up. where there is any need for a golf cart in an area with no green vegetation larger then 10 square feet is beyond me, but I hopped on and caught the world’s slowest ride to a fenced area that had….GOATS!

Excited to see my plan coming together, I hopped off the golf cart and started to hope two things (1) that this was the same goat-buying-place my sister was headed to, and (2) that they hadn’t already been there. Being the only white person and the only person over 5’1″ there, I leaned next to a fence and tried to smile as farmers walked around looking at goats. I ended up playing with some kids in a game called “lets run around the goat in circles until the goat gets pissed off and runs”.

I started to get worried when i started to get hungry. I knew I’d be fine but that meant I had been there for a while and the chances of my sister already having been there were growing increasingly larger.

After what seemed like an hour, a white truck pulled up and out stepped my sister! Neither of us could believe we found the other. I met her host family, we bought what looked to be a beautiful goat and spent the rest of the day walking through the market with the, looking at the art in the church and talking about how we stood out. Margaret and I caught a bus back to Oaxaca when i decided to never drink Mexican water before a long bus ride again.

overall, awesome trip. 10/10, would do again.