Oaxaca!

I leave tomorrow morning (sniff) from Oaxaca airport.  I've been here since satudary and have been having such a great time that I haven't had even a small chance to write any posts! 

So Oaxaca is the state just south of Puebla and it extends through several types of mountains all the way to the ocean.  I've been in Oaxaca city the entire time, which is a fantastic city.  It is beautifully historic, very interesting, very chill and mostly quiet (except in some of the crazier markets), and has some spectacular food.

I was expecting to come here alone, but at the last minute I roped two students into coming with me.  One stayed from Saturday until Monday afternoon and the other stayed until just a few hours ago, on Tuesday.  Having people down here with me definitely enhanced the experience.  One of the best experieences in Oaxaca is the food and sharing food is always better than eating alone.  We spent our time here mostly wandering through food markets, crafts markets, the areas around the zocalo, and eating spectacular food.  Saturday afternoon, Kristen and I went out for an amazing lunch at Casa Oaxaca, which seemed to be the height of fine dining here but only set us back about $20 each.  The food was great, partly because of the quality and partly because it actually had flavors we hadn't eaten in a while.

Sunday was mostly a day of wandering markets and then a nice italian dinner with Kristen and Cove.  Monday was more market wandering, and a great botanical garden with the three of us.  Cove left and 4ish and Kristen and I had a less than fantastic dinner at a restaurant with more than fantastic decorations (Las Danzantes)...  the restaurant was very fung shui as someone else described it to me, with a ceiling open to the sky although mostly covered by a billowing canvas roof.  Once it started raining and we got a bit wet and moved, the whole restaurant was filled by the sounds of the water falling into the pools at one end of the restaurant, which was prett amazing.

Today was more craft shopping and markets (oh yeah, and a lot of hot chocolate) before Kristen finally went home.  I've spent the rest of teh evening just getting my stuff together and getting ready for my trip home tomorrow.  I can't believe it's all over... it's been a real trip, both literally and figuratively.

mike.

No more pictures

For the second time this trip, I am left confused about what happened with my camera and for the first time I am left unable to take any pictures.  Sometime on Saturday my camera started telling me that I have a memory card error.  This is actually the second time this has happened to me, the first time being with my other memory card, although it wasn't as big a deal last time because the card was almst full and I had a second card to use.

I haven't been able to take pictures more or less since I got to Oaxaca, which really sucks because it is beautiful here.  Luckily I roped two other students into coming to Oaxaca with me, so I'll hopefully get their pictures.

Two more days and I´m out of here (or at least out of puebla)

Tomorrow is my last day of class and Saturday is the day I leave Puebla after four long and wonderful weeks.  A group of students are getting together tonight for some dinner and drinks as an early going away party, since they all still have a week left here (I´m doing my 4 weeks here out of sync with everyone else).  Tomorrow is the last day of class and my last dinner with my fam.  And then saturday at 11a, I hop on a bus to Oaxaca, a city in a state (of the same name) about 4 hours south of here.

It´ll be a sad going away, but at the same time, I´m excited to see Oaxaca (which is supposed to have great food and be an around chill and wonderful place) and to get back home after 5 weeks of being away and six weeks without seeing beth!  

I´m guessing I won´t post again until Sundayish, since my next few days will be pretty normal.  By sunday, though, I´ll have experienced Oaxaca some and will have more to write.   

Teotihuacan

Teotihucan
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

On Sunday, the whole school took a trip to Teotihuacan and then to a few sights in Mexico City.

Teotihuacan is a set of ancient pyramids that were originally built around 0 BC, although they were later used by other civilizations including, most recently, the Aztecs. The pyramids themselves were pretty amazing, although due to disrepair, some of them have been actually "reconstructed" and not always in the correct manner. The main pyramid, for example, is supposed to have four stages although it was rebuilt with 5 for some reason. It takes away from the mystical quality a bit ot know that we aren´t looking at what was really there, but nonetheless the pyramids were pretty amazing. The tallest was a few hundred feet high, although I´ve heard that the ones in Egypt are quite a bit higher and steeper. We were able to climb up most of them, which gave fantastic views as well as a great stair workout.

After Teotihuacan, we headed to Mexico City to see a museum (that I hadn´t seen yet) and the Zocalo (which I had seen). The trip was fun though... a chance to spend extra time with friends from school, see a few new sights, etc...

Tonight its off to Lucha Libre again. How can I turn that down?

Quetzalan

I finally got myself out of cities and into the beautiful mountains around here.  I headed up to Quetzalan with another student on Friday night and got back Saturday. It´s a 4 hour bus ride from here to there, but it took me more like 8 hours to get there all said and done.  To keep the story short, lets just say that there are two places called "Zaragoza" and when I bought my FIRST ticket, I bought it for the wrong Zaragoza and ended up crossing an 8 lane highway at one point to jump on a bus in the other direction. 

When we finally did get there, it was an place to see.  The town is a few thousand feet higher in the mountains than puebla (I´m guessing around 8k or 9k feet) and is pretty much built into the side of the mountain.  The whole town is pretty much inclined, with each farm and all of the main streets going straight up the hills... just like in SF, there were stairs built into a lot of the main sidewalks.

The town itself was very different looking than others around here, with far more native influence (and a lot of people still wearing traditional clothing).  The climate was more or less the same as the farm that Beth and I stayed on in Ecuador - cloud forest, which means some sun, but mostly fog rolling in and out and a bit of rain.  We spent our 12 waking hours there wandering around the town, taking a "bus" which was really more of a pickup truck with a bench in the back and a tarp covering it to a nearby town where there was a short hike to beautiful waterfalls, eating local food, and I got a massage ($30 for 1.5 hours!). 

All in all, despite the extraordinary amount of bus riding in a 24 hour period, it was completely worth the time and pain of the trip.  It was great to get out of the city and into the mountains and see some different scenery.

Also, a bonus of getting on the wrong bus is that I bought a specialty here, Tacos Arabe, which is basically a "taco" of spiced meat, arab style, wrapped in a "pita" tortilla rather than in a regular tortilla.  Perhaps the best taco I´ve had yet.  I actually had a moment of silence the next day to remember the wonder of those tacos!

Long time, no post, again.

I haven´t posted in a while and not because life hasn´t been interesting here, but more because the week was pretty normal with little new happening and I was gone all weekend.

The week was more or less a week of classes and nothing more.  I have a new prof (Lola), who is a pretty good teacher although not nearly as good as the last two.  I´ll have her until I leave this friday, which is fine... her best point is that she stresses exercises in the book, which my previous teachers didn´t.  A little practice to supplement the conversation is a good thing.

On Wednesday of last week we went to Tlaxcala, the smallest state in Mexico, which is about an hour east of here.  While the city was beautiful and all that, I have to say, I´m completely sick and tired of churches and museums.  No más!

Anyway, I´ll update on my weekend activities in other posts.

LUCHA LIBRE!

It was better than I could have ever imagined.  Lucha Libre (or Nacho Libre for Jack Black fans).

Lucha Libre is Mexican wrestling.  You could compare it to the WWF, but you´d have to think WWF from 40 or 50 years ago, before it became such a big business.  You´d also have to add masks to most of the wrestlers.  yup.... they wear masks, tights, boots, and nothing else.  It is freaking hilarious. 

The "stadium" itself is about the size of a big high school gym, but with a wrestling ring in the middle and bleachers all around.  We bought the expensive ringside seats that are assigned seating for $12 so we didn´t have to sit around in the gym for 3 hours before the thing started to get a good seat.  The wrestling itself was just as fake as in the US with more acrobatics and a lot more fighting in the stands.  I was on the aisle 8 rows back and got sweat on more than a few times because the guys were fighting literally right next to me.  Oh yeah, and the fans are freaking hilarious as well.  Not only do they go nuts the whole time, they essentially curse each other and the other wrestlers out the entire time.

I think pictures are really the only thing to describe this:

 

 

 

 

Today is my anniversary

Just a short post... today is the 6 month anniversary of my shoulder surgery... which means.... I can do anything I want now! 

Dancing and Soccer

So I went out dancing last night, which isn't usually my bag, but I had a great time.  One student who has been in private lessons also for the past few weeks is leaving tomorrow, so she organized a few students, a few guides, and the 3 sisters of one of the guides to go out.  All in all, we were a group of 8, but with 5 locals, which is a great mix.  We were also 5 girls to 3 guys, which is always good as well.

We went to a bar that turned into a mix of a salsa club and a regular dance club.  At about 11:30, live salsa music started and for the next 2.5 hours while we were there, the band played for about 30 minutes alternative with 30 or so minutes of DJ dance music.  I've never danced salsa before, so I was ridiculously bad even though some of the girls in our group tried to teach me.  I must have done something right though (I think what I did right was being a foreigner), bc a girl from another table (after asking the girls at our table permission) pulled me on the floor and we danced for about 15 or 20 minutes.  She even grabbed me over to her table for pictures before I left :)  I'm telling you though, I was an awful dancer, so it wasn't the dancing that brought her over.

Today I went to a soccer game with some people, although things didn{t work out as planned.  First we took a bus about 30 minutes in the wrong direction, so we didn't get to the stadium until about 1:35 for a game that we thought started at 1.  We bought our tickets, sat down, watched a goal a few nice saves and 10 minutes later the game ended.  Turns out it stated at 12!  What a pain in the ass!  Oh well... worse things have happened.  We stuck around the stadium for a while just to see things get cleaned up, etc... and then headed to the zocalo for some lunch, some live music, and to watch spray paint artists at work.  Not a bad day, even though it didn{t go as planned.

And a shout out to Beth, who has her first day of work tomorrow!  Good luck!  And remember what Jeff says, "tick, tock, tick, tock....."

Dancing and Soccer

So I went out dancing last night, which isn't usually my bag, but I had a great time.  One student who has been in private lessons also for the past few weeks is leaving tomorrow, so she organized a few students, a few guides, and the 3 sisters of one of the guides to go out.  All in all, we were a group of 8, but with 5 locals, which is a great mix.  We were also 5 girls to 3 guys, which is always good as well.

We went to a bar that turned into a mix of a salsa club and a regular dance club.  At about 11:30, live salsa music started and for the next 2.5 hours while we were there, the band played for about 30 minutes alternative with 30 or so minutes of DJ dance music.  I've never danced salsa before, so I was ridiculously bad even though some of the girls in our group tried to teach me.  I must have done something right though (I think what I did right was being a foreigner), bc a girl from another table (after asking the girls at our table permission) pulled me on the floor and we danced for about 15 or 20 minutes.  She even grabbed me over to her table for pictures before I left :)  I'm telling you though, I was an awful dancer, so it wasn't the dancing that brought her over.

Today I went to a soccer game with some people, although things didn{t work out as planned.  First we took a bus about 30 minutes in the wrong direction, so we didn't get to the stadium until about 1:35 for a game that we thought started at 1.  We bought our tickets, sat down, watched a goal a few nice saves and 10 minutes later the game ended.  Turns out it stated at 12!  What a pain in the ass!  Oh well... worse things have happened.  We stuck around the stadium for a while just to see things get cleaned up, etc... and then headed to the zocalo for some lunch, some live music, and to watch spray paint artists at work.  Not a bad day, even though it didn{t go as planned.

And a shout out to Beth, who has her first day of work tomorrow!  Good luck!  And remember what Jeff says, "tick, tock, tick, tock....."

Cholula

Cholula
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

I took a trip to Cholula today, which is a town about 10 miles or so from Puebla... The bus trip over there was fine... I took city buses and would have gotten there in about 30 minutes if it weren´t for the fact that the granddaughter in my house gave me _slightly_ wrong directions. I stood at a bus stop for about 30 minutes waiting for the bus to come by marked "Cholula-centro," all the while apparantly watching buses go by every two minutes that said Cholula-xxxx. I finally asked someone if those go to center of Cholula and they said yes. So I jumped the next one and made it there.

Cholula itself is a pretty neat place. There is an amazing zocalo and a million churches (the lore is that they wanted to build 365 churches there, one for every day of the week, but I think there are more like 40, which is still impressive for such a small place). The most impressive feature of the city is a church built on top of a giant hill. Although it isn´t just any hill. It turns out that the grass and trees on the hill cover the widest pyramid in the world. It isn´t clear whether the church was purposely built on top of the old Aztec? Mayan? pyramid... some historians think yes, some no.

Anyway, the whole place is pretty great. There are some tunnels that go through the pyramids that you can walk through and then you can wander around teh base of teh hill and see a lot of the uncovered ruins of the base of the pyramid. After that, you can wander up the hill and check out the church (which was fine, just another church) and the view (which was spectacular - 360 views of the whole area).

In wandering around the town, I had some awesome food as well. A quesidilla from a little street "restaurant" where they made the tortillas right in front of me and stuff the thing with cheese, squash blossoms, and mushrooms. Later I wandered around a fruit and vegi and meat market and found a little makeshift fod stand and had "gorditas." Contrary to Taco Bell menu folk lore, a gordita is actually more or less a tortilla topped with salsa (red or green), onions, and a bit of cheese. Que rico!

I´m going out with some school folks and guides tonight. We´ll see how late I make it. We´re not leaving until 10p, which means they will all probably stay out until 5a. I, on the other hand, will likely crash far earlier being that 1) I´m super used to getting up at 7a everyday and 2) I´m gonig to a soccer game at 11a tomorrow and I want to enjoy it a bit rather than have a hang over and fall asleep during the game.

FOOD!

One fun thing that I did with my guide this week (her name was Fatima and she´ll hopefully be coming to the US for about 8 months next year, so I´m trying to get her to stop by philly) is try Mexican sweets.  For two days, I spent half of my guide time wandering around on this street that has about 40 candy stores and bought a bunch of things.  Below is a sampling of the stuff that I had:

Pulvoron, San Carlos brand.  This is a special cookie that is usually eaten at xmas.  While it was tasty, polvo litterally means "dust", and they weren´t kidding.  It literally turned into dust when I ate it.

This was called "mango enchilada" which more or less means dried mango coated in chile.  It was quite tasty and not spicy at all.

Dried Garbanzo bean with Chile and lime.  It was a really tasty snack!

Chocolate Covered Cookie.  It tasted exactly like it sounds, which is really good.

Candied Lemon Rind.  Surprisingly, this wasn´t really bitter at all, more sweet and a bit sour but not much else.  I didn´t mind eating it, but it certainly wasn´t my favorite.

Crystalized Squash.  It sounds strange and it was.  The taste was actually pretty good, although not awesome.  The texture, however, wasn´t super.  It was nice and tough on the outside, but the inside was too mushy for my taste.

And finally.

I ate a grasshopper.  I knew that they were around, but had yet to see them.  Fatima had told me they were good, but they aren´t just sitting in the candy stores with all of the other stuff (maybe because it isn´t sweet...).  But I was in a park today and there was a woman selling all sorts of nuts, etc...  I noticed that she had a huge bag of grasshoppers.  She offered me one to try.  So I took it and popped it in and... it was actually pretty good.  Salty and fried and very dead.  It was certainly a bit weird and I´m not sure i want to eat any more of them, but what the hell, I´m in Mexico.

Catch up post

I haven´t written since last weekend, I think, and I appologize for that but I´ve had a pretty normal life for the past week and haven´t had much to talk about.  All of the new students showed up and despite my fear that they would all be retirees (because this 4 week session ends well into september, after school starts for most people), the majority of people are in their 20s. 

I´m now in "group class", but I´m the only one at my level, so I basically have individual classes for the rest of teh time that I´m here, which is spectacular.  The only bad thing that happened for the past week (although I´m switching back to a normal schedule for the next two weeks), is that I had a reversed schedule.  Rather than class from 9-1 and conversation time with a guide from 2:30-4:30, I had guide time from 11-1 and class from 2:30-6:30.  Not only was it extremely exhausting to have 4 hours of afternoon class, but I didn´t get to know the other students as well as I would have liked because they generally all left school before I was out of class.

Aside from that, the week was normal.  I went to class all week, I went to the movies with the granddaughter who lives in my house (she´s 22), I went to bed early last night because I was tired.  Not much to report :)

My house.....

I think I talked about my host family, but I haven´t said much about where I live besides the fact that there is always a TV on, my bedroom is a good size, and there is a lot of religious stuff around the house (including in my room). So here are some pictures of the house (below). The house itself is about 2k sq feet, with party walls on both sides to the neighbors. There is a smallish backyard, split into two parts... one for the dog and laundry and one for a small garden and porch. The downstairs is all living space, whereas the upstairs is basically all bedrooms, except for a TV room with a few couches that no one really uses.

And without further ado (my room is the last picture):

I think this Cemita is bigger than my head

One of the specialty foods of Puebla is the Cemita, which is basically the same thing as a Torta, which is is the Mexican take on a sandwich.  The difference with the Cemita, as far as I can tell is that the bread is usually a bit more oval shaped than round like most tortas.  If you´ve never had a cemita or torta, they are both sandwiches on something that approximates a really nice kaiser roll, although generally a bit bigger, where much of teh bread inside has been scooped out to make room for the filling.  You can get just about anything on a torta that you can get on a taco (chicken, carne asada, bbq pork, carnitas, etc...), although they generally don´t have standard american sandwiches like ham and cheese and nothing else.  Cemitas tend to be similar, but often have "milenesa", which is a really thinly pounded, breaded chicken cutlet, avocado, and quesilla. 

I went to a place called "La Poblanita" for lunch today, on a recommendation from a local.  The name basically translates into¨"the little woman from Puebla."  While the owner may be a little woman from Puebla, the sandwiches are anything but little.  As you can see by the picture on the right, the cemita that I got, a Cemita Cubana, was just about the size of my head.  It was freaking enormous.  I asked the guys at my table, who had ordered the same thing, if they could eat the whole thing.  They told me that theirs was just an apetizer and they were getting another cemita in a few minutes.  Suffice it to say that none of us actually finished our cemitas.  We all came pretty close... I´d say I ate 3/4 of it.  The Cubana was a combo of ham, chorizo, milanesa, avocado, quesillo (which is a dryish shredded cheese that you would put in quesidillas), lettuce, and egg.  I ate it about 3 hours ago and I´m still full!

I also stopped by a couple of street fairs today and couldn´t resist the freshly made potato chips with chile sauce on top.  Despite the fact that the woman recommended against it because it would be too spicy, I got the chips with everything on them, which included 5 different chile sauces, chile powder, and some sort of vinegar infused with some other flavor (tamarind?).  It was delicious!  And I generally don´t like potato chips all that much!

Puebla to Philly

I got my first confirmation today that there is a huge concentration of Poblanos in Philly... There isn´t a good reason why there are so many Poblanos there except that some of teh first people that left Puebla went to Philly and then brought family, cousins, neighbors, friends, etc... and now Philly has become a good place for Poblanos to go. 

Amazingly enough, the town that we were in for horseback riding officially has a population of 25,000 people, but only 10,000 actually live there becaues 15,000! have moved to the US to work.  Perhaps that is a bit extreme compared to other parts of the country, but it puts things in perspective.  Also, imagine what losing half of your populatoin is like, especially when the majority of the population that leaves is young and male.  It must devestate an already rough economy....

Horseback Riding!

I spent the day today horseback riding in Calpan, a small pueblo about an hour outside of Puebla, with some friends from the school who are leaving tomorrow.

The trip was great! We were picked up in front of the school at about 9a by the guide who drove us about an hour into the countryside to Calpan. The country here looks a lot like the country in a lot of other countries I have been in... the paved roads are pretty well maintained although with a few holes here and there, once off the main road, many roads are dirt except in the towns, and everything you see around you is farmland. But don´t think US farmland where you see miles and miles of corn. People don´t own that much land here and many don´t have plows, so we´re talking more along the lines of an acre of corn, an acre of beans, some squash, some more corn, etc... And everything is a bit dusty.

We got into town and had a great breakfast. They guy told us to eat a light breakfast while he got the horses ready, but all the place really had was chicken dishes and carne asada. I had a great dish with chicken and a green sauce whose name I already forgot... something like Grabone or something like that. After a nice relaxing breakfast, we jumped on the horses and rode around the countryside, down into a canyon, up the other side, through people´s cornfields, etc... for about 3.5 hours. We galloped a few times in the fields and up some of the steeper hills, which was awesome!

After we got back (and were thoroughly exhausted), we got back to town for a few beers and some lunch. I had Chiles en Nogado, the official dish of Puebla, which is basically a chile stuffed with meat and fruit (most raisins), fried, and then covered with a really sweet cream sauce (that tasted like it had tons of nutmeg in it) and topped off with pomegranite seeds and parsley. The dish looks red, white, and green, for the colors of the mexican flag. See picture to the right. The dish was freaking delicious! I´ll have to have it a few more times before I go... I definitely like it more than the Mole Poblano that Puebla is so famous for.

After lunch we checked out another ex-convent and then came back.

Just like when Beth and I went horseback riding in Argentina, the guide for this trip was awesome... really chatty, a great outlook on life, and a really wonderful person all around. We talked to him the entire trip about everything from the large concentration of people from Puebla in Philadelphia to improving tourism in his part of the state, to the place in the park where I can go tomorrow to find myself a "girlfriend" for the day =)

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Whistling Curses

Apparantly you can whistle curses (I don´t know if this is exclusive to Mexico or this is something you can do in all Spanish speaking places).  The main one that people whistle is "chinga tu madre", which basically means "fuck your mother" and is more or less the worst thing you can say here.  To whistle it, you just whistle (or honk your horn) to the cadence of the syllables of the phrase in a bit of a melody.  You can even respond "el tuya" (yours also) with 3 short whistles or honks.

Strange.  I wish we could do that in the US....   

Afternoons in Language School

I think I mentioned already that during the afternoons, we are set up with a local college student who acts as a guide around the city.  We can pretty much do anything with them, the idea being that we´ll get to chat and practice what we´ve been learning with a native speaker/non-teacher who can also show us around the city and tell us stuff that you might not find in the guidebook.  The first day, we just walked around the city for 2 hours, on Tuesday, we went to a few ex-convents (they are everywhere in mexico) and a church. 

Yesterday was a school trip to a artisan factory where they make more or less anything you can think of of onyx and marble... everything from tiny carved elephants to giant outdoor tables.  Literally anything. We actually watched a guy make an elephant right in front of us in about 10 mintues total, from a block of onyx to a polished elephant.  It was pretty incredible (and a bit scary): he basically had a giant wet circular saw and cut out a template that was the basic shape of the elephant.  Then, without anything, he cut all of the detail into the elephant,  including all of the little ribs in the trunk.  It was fairly amazing.  The scary part was that he did it all without any safety gloves or eyewear.  When he was finished, he actually washed his hands in the thin spray of water coming off of the saw by holding his hands about and inch away from the spinning blade.  Crazy.  But he had 10 fingers, so I guess he knows what he is doing.

Today I went to the black market where they sell everything from pirated computer games to pirated movies to televisions to knock off clothes.  I found some jeans there :)

Two days in school!

I´ve been in school for two days now and I´m loving it!  The school works on a 4 week schedule and I came during week 4, so everyone here (almost everyone) is in a set class already and is leaving in a few days.  Since I´m here at an off time, I´m doing one on one classes for the week and then I start in with a new group of students in a class next week.

The classes are great.  My teacher (Sylvia) is super cool and a great teacher.  Because it´s one-one and I have specific goals, she is catering the entire course to my needs, which is awesome.  I have 4 hours of one on one each day, where we do a lot of talking, some writing, some reading, and some listening to CDs of news, etc...  I definitely have a long way to go to where I want to be language wise, but my Spanish has come back pretty well so far.

After the 4 hours of class, we have 1.5 hours for lunch at one of two restaurants - one is a vegi restaurant and the other is a mexican buffet.  The buffet was okay, but the vegi place is awesome!  It basically has vegi versions of all of the regular mex foods that you can think of plus many that I´ve never heard of.

After lunch we all go to the Zocalo (the main square) and meet up with "guides" who are college students from the nearby university.  Each student is assigned to a guide for the week and you can do anything you want with them.  Yesterday, my guide and I just walked around the city and saw all of the main churches, etc...  Today we we a bit more focused and went to an ex-convent and a crazy church...  It´s a great time because you just get to chat for 2 hours without worry AND you get a guide around the town, whcih is really nice.

And then I have homework each night, which is tiring, but great as well - I certainly need more practice, so homework helps.

Anyway, that´s all for now, but more later!   

Images of the School

Spices in a market, DF

Spices in a market, DF
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

Mariachi bands in Plaza Girabaldi

Mariachi bands in Plaza Girabaldi, DF
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

My last night in DF, I decided to stray a bit from my hotel (most nights I didn´t go too far from the hotel) and wandered over to Plaza Girabaldi, about a mile away. I´m not sure if this happens every night, but the night I was there, the plaza was completely full of both Mariachi bands and locals hanging out to watch the bands.

The place basically worked like this - everyone hangs around and drinks or chats or eats or whatever, including the mariachis. Every once in a while, someone will pay one of the bands $10 or so and they play a few songs. As you wander around, there is almost always at least 1 band playing if not 2 or 3....

I went alone, but met an awesome
couple at a restaurant-bar and spent the night hanging out with them (Alex and Paul - she is starting at Yale in a few weeks to get an MFA in Acting and he said he "writes a little".) We had some beers, watched some mariachi, and then grabbed a cab home. Not a bad way to end the night!

Puelba!

I made it to Puebla today from Mexico City.  I´ll blog about my last few days in DF another day - I forgot my camera when I came to the internet place, so I can´t post any pictures which are key to the experiences that I had.

I hopped a metro and then a bus today and made it to Puebla in just a few short hours.  My family picked me up at the bus station and brough me home.  The family (Lupita and Salvador) couldn´t be nicer and in many ways so similar to our famiy in Chile.  They are an older couple, with some grand kids in their 20s already.  They live in a nice neighborhood a few miles from the city center and live with a granddaughter (who I have yet to meet).  Just like Carlos and Patricia in Chile, Lupita, the wife, speaks a bit of english and is far more engaged with me and the other student.  The husband, Sadvador, is more like Carlos - he speaks about what he wants, when he wants with no care for whether or not I´ll understand him or not.  He is quite nice as well, just less concerned with people understandng him.

THe house itself is nice, and I even get to sleep in a king sized bed!  There is another student there, from Canada, who the family badmouthed on the way back from the bus statoni for not learning enough spanish!  I hope I don´t get bad mouthed as well.    Oh yeah, and one more thing - I have a giant crucifix over my bed, 2 pictures of jesus in the room, and an open bible in the hallway....  Wow....

I start school tomorrow, so I´ll have a lot more to say then.... until tomorrow or the next day!   

Lucky to get a hotel room

Turns out I was very lucky to get a hotel room this week on the short notice that I booked my room (I booked it two days ahead of time).  The international AIDS conference was held here all week and hosted roughly 30,000 guests, many of whom came from other countries and cities.  Needless to say, the hotels in this city were apparently packed to the brim... how I got a spot is beyond me, but blind luck is fine with me!

Day 3, coming to a close in DF

This is my last full day in Mexico City (DF stands for districto federal, kind of like DC in Washington DC) and it has been great so far.  I went for a 5.5 mile run this morning, which was really nice.  I'm at about 6000 feet, although the altitude hasn't bothered me at all.  The polution is bad, but the amazing weather (58 degrees at 8am) makes up for that completely.

After breakfast, I headed down to San Angel, a rich "suburb" of DF, where there is an amazing crafts market.  I spent a few hours there, although I only bought one small thing.  I know there are a number of nice crafts markets in Oaxaca, my last stop in Mexico, so I'll do more of my shopping there. 

After San Angel, I headed over to another nice neighborhood, the name of which completely escapes me, although it starts with a C.  Again, amazing houses, nice streets, lots of colors, etc...  I wandered into an indoor food market kind of similar to Reading Terminal Market in Philly and saw tons of chile peppers, fruits, spices, raw tripe, etc....  Quite impressionable!

One last interesting story - last night I wandered into a cafe for dinner and saw an american looking woman sitting alone, so I sat with her and we ate together.  It turns out that her and her husband just moved to philly as well - about a month ago.  Small world!

No holes in the streets

I have a reputation for not being able to walk when I'm in foreign countries, although this time around I seem to be doing okay.  Maybe after my run in Kampala with the crazy holes in the street, I'm new and improved at walking around foreign cities.  The streets here are nice and clear and paved and lack holes altogether, whcih is a good thing.

Another day in DF

Apparently chocolate originated in Mexico... and I always thought it came from Africa. Anyway, I went to the most delicious churrurria/chocolate house last night. Churros are basically the mexican version of fried dough (is there a culture without fried dough?)... so at this place you could basically order two things: hot chocolate (of varying levels of sweetness) and churros, in orders of 4 or more. The churros were pretty great, although not fresh from the fryer, so not perfect. The hot chocolate, on the other hand, was out of this world. Maybe the best hot chocolate I´ve ever had, although I can´t remember the previous number one.

I spent the rest of yesterday wading through some rain storms, checking out Diego Rivera murals that are all over the city, eating another wonderful dinner of tacos and tortas, and drinking cocoa.

Today, I took a long walk down the Reforma, the main boulevard that cuts across the city and headed into the largest park in the city (name of the park: grasshopper park). The park itself was pretty nice, although all the tranquility that would have been there was killed by the pathways completely lined with people selling crap - chips, popcorn, bubbles, hats, tshirts, etc... And half of the stands feel that if they blast bad music, there is a better chance for you to buy stuff at there place instead of the cart next to them selling the same crap.

After the park, I headed to the Anthropological Museum, where they have amazing artifacts from all over Mexico - it's definitely one of these museums that you need 2 days to see everything. I spent my time looking at the Mayan, Oaxacan, and Aztec stuff... all amazing, although I think the Aztecs might have been the most amazing. And from my brief view of three civilizations spanning thousands of years, the only threads I can find among them are: 1) very advanced agricultural techniques and 2) religions that are very blood thirsty. The Aztecs apparently sacraficed thousands of people every time they added onto their main temple.

Tonight, I'm not sure what I'm up to. I'm going to go back to the hotel in the next hour or so and relax for a few hours (walking all day can be really tiring). Then I may head out and try to find a gringo bar somewhere. The one amazing thing about this trip is that I've been comletely surrounded by Mexicans. I have yet to really run into any other non-hispanic tourists (I'm not at a hostal). I like to talk to people! I figure the best place to find americans or europeans or other english speaking travellers is at some sort of an irish pub.... we'll see.

mike.

More observations

1. First off, I have been completely shocked at the weather. I was thinking: Mexico, it´s going to be 100 degrees everyday. Nope. Mexico City is in the mountains, so the weather has been a beatiful 75 degrees during the day and in the high 50s at night. I couldn´t ask for better weather!
2. I have only heard one horn playing la cucaracha. But then again, I did hear a horn playing la cucaracha on the first day I was here.
3. Although they are around more than in the US, not all mexican men sport mustaches and mullets.
4. More sightings of American chains: Woolworths (I thought they shut down years ago), BK, KFC, all major retail stores, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Dominos. I think I may shut this category of observation down... they have everything here.
5. Despite the fact that this is a very pious country, they use sex to sell things here more than we do.
6. Latin American Idol

Torre Mayor

Torre Mayor
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

According to the LP, this is the tallest building in all of Latin America... ¿Really? It was only about 55 or 60 stories high... and it was built about 5 years ago. I would have guessed that a city as cosmopolitan as this one or at least somewhere like Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo or something like that would have a taller building than 60 stories.

They don{t even have a lookout from the top of the building. LP says that they do, but my book is 2-3 years old, so maybe it closed. Too bad!

Shining Shoes

Shining Shoes
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

I think this is one of the most prevelent jobs in Mexico City... I guess it is a sign of the economics of the city - a lot of people with enough money to pay for regular shoe shines and a lot of people who have little job opportunity so work as shoe shiners.

These little stands are literally everywhere in the center of the city. In the main plazas, there is a stand every 25 feet in some places! They seem to do a great job, too - the shoes that come off the stands are super shiny. If only I had something more than sneakers with me....

Successful Arrival

I made it.  I´m here and in one piece.  I don´t know why this seems like such a big deal these days, but whenever I fly now, the fact that I made it somewhere ontime, with no flight problems, and successfully checked into my hotel seems like a grand feat.  I was actually a little worried about the hotel because I made the reservation over the phone about a week ago and the guy only spoke spanish.  I was pretty sure I had a reservation, but I guess you never know until you get there.

My first 20ish hours have been fun but uneventful.  My hotel (recommended by a buddy from college who just spent about 4 months here) is right off of the Zocalo, the main plaza at the heart of the city.  The area around here is beautiful, with tons of amazingly grand spanish colonial buildings and, of course, a massive cathedral (catholicism is written into the constitution).  I wandered around a bit last night to get the lay of the land, ate a bit of food (see previous post) and went to sleep in my comfortable, but extraordinarily small room.  Today I took a run when I first woke up, then wandered around some of the sights in the Zocalo.  After this post, I´ll head off to grab some lunch, which I´m hoping is spectacular. 

A few observations about life here so far:

1) I´ve seen the following american chains so far: McDonalds, Walmart, Pizza Hut, 7-11 (lots of them), the set it and forget it guy on TV, Sears, etc.... Mostly stuff down here isn´t american, but it certainly isn´t hard to bump into some our economic imperialism

2) My hotel room is really small - in a lot of ways, it really is perfect - exactly the space I need with nothing more.  But here is the rub - it has a boat style bathroom, where the shower pretty much is part of the room and gets everything soaked.  What if you want to go to the bathroom within an hour of taking a shower?

3) I think I´m going to like eating things wrapped and fried.  More on that at a later time.

4) I came down here with my hiking pants as my only long pants.  I think I´m going to buy jeans.

that´s it for now.

My first meal might have been a risk, but boy was it delicious

Taqueria
Originally uploaded by Michael Hollander

I wandered around a bit on the first night after I got in (I got in at about 10p to the hotel) just to check out the area. I was a bit hungry and found this taqueria and had the most delicious taco ($1) of al pastor and cheese and some hot sauce. There were a lot of people there, so I figured I was safe and I think I guessed right.

And away we go

It's been a whirlwind two weeks.  Just over two weeks ago, Beth and I came up to Philly, looked at 23 apartments in 2 days, found an apt, went back to Virginia, finished packing (Beth did most of the packing work), came back to Philly, took the bar exam, went back to Virginia, packed all our stuff into a truck, drove back to Philly, and unpacked.  And now that I've moved all our stuff into our apt in Philly, I'm off to Mexico.  And oh yeah, Beth is off on a vacation in California and the Pacific Northwest with a friend.

So Mexico.  In a lot of ways, I know exactly what to expect, being that Beth and I did a 4 month trip around South America a few years ago, including a language school.  On the other hand, I have no idea what to expect - I've never travelled alone before, which should be interesting.  I've also never been to the "real" Mexico - the land that exists outside of Tiajuana and Cancun.  Of course I'm enamored of the food and the language and the culture, but I think I'm more enamored of the American version of all of that.  We'll see what I think of the Mexican version of Mexico....

My Rough Itinerary:
8/06 - Fly to Mexico City
8/06-8/10 - Mexico City
8/10 - Bus to Puebla
8/10-9/5 - Puebla/Language School, probably some weekend trips
9/5 - Bus to Oaxaca
9/5-9/10 - Oaxaca
9/10 - Fly home

The 8/10-9/5 part is pretty set in stone, although I guess life can be crazy and things change. 

I'm off to continue packing my stuff and unpacking my apartment (a little bit) so that I'll be ready to go to Mexico in 2 days!

Ciao,
Mike