Ryan Anderson
On my last day in Oaxaca I was standing on the 2,500 year old archaeological site at the Cerro de Atzompa in the morning, and by 10 p.m. that night I was pushing my way through the Los Angeles International Airport. It was a disjointed and spectacular last day of travel. I spent about 5 weeks down in Oaxaca as part of the Ethnographic Field Methods course run by Dr. Ramona Perez. I can't even begin to explain all of the experiences that I had down there, but I can tell you that they have had a powerful effect upon my life. The whole reason I started studying anthropology was for such an experience—and this is just the beginning. While all of the background readings and books were helpful, they were no match for the people and places that I encountered in and around Oaxaca. Travel isn't as safe and comfortable as flipping through the pages of a book, and it isn't as orderly, but it's immensely rewarding. Traveling throws everything out the window—comforts, assumptions, generalizations—and it forced me to find ways to locate who I am in new, often difficult, settings. The result, for me, was an amazing learning experience.