Last Day in México

Today is my de facto last day in México City. Tomorrow I'm leaving for Juarez International to go back to Atlanta. Today I went to the Cerros, finally. It was really amazing to be up there, but at that height the air is even thinner than in El Valle de Mexico. So it was rough up there. Especially when the hill got too steep to drive the dirtbike and Axel (not to be confused with 'axle') and I had to push it. Towards the top of the mountain/hill were a jail and a landfill. Further up was just trails, and fields with animals, like sheep, with some boys around 11 herding them. The kind of thing that only happens in books and movies and the bible.


What I remember the most about Los Cerros is how windy it was, how beautiful it was (I could see both Las Piramides de Teotihuacan and Popocatépetl, the enormous volcano around the Valle de México, at the same time), how windy it was, and how I learned to ride a manual-transmission dirtbike on top of a mountain.

Día 14

Today we went to UNAM. It was pretty amazing except for all the waiting I did outside of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy building. I only have 2 more days in México. I may finally go to Los Cerros tomorrow. Maybe.

Día 12

After 5 days in a row it stopped raining.

Día 10

Today was a long day. It's been a while since I wrote, but I haven't missed on saying much. Yesterday we went to Reforma, a district downtown with all the nice stuff. Also, Zona Rosa. I saw the symbol of Mexican Independence, the Ángel de la Independencia. It was pretty cool. Like a mexican statue of liberty but maybe a little smaller. Anyway we didn't really do much else there (in Reforma), but that was because it was raining so no one was out. Yesterday was also Axel's son's (Aldo el Coreano's) birthday. It's been raining for 4 days now.

Today we went to Ranchería and had carnitas. They're barbecued pork meat which you wrap in tortillas and shove in your mouth. They were good. Afterwards we went to El Centro again, this time with Rubén's grandmother and aunt. We spent some time there and then went to Xochimilco. Xochimilco is like the Venice of México; it's a series of ancient canals that used to go all the way from xochimilco, miles away from the capital, all the way to El Zócalo, where the square and the old cathedral were when I went a few days ago. Anyway, Xochimilco was a really cool place to be, because of the boating, and the food, and all of the other cool stuff. I just found out it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's pretty cool to be visiting those around the world. gotta catch 'em all.


The last thing we did today after Xochimilco was come back to the house and eat tinga. It was pretty good. Really good. It's something you definitely can't find in the states though. I liked it a lot... I feel pretty good.

PS Yesterday, I found a For Sale sign that said "No se vende por los pinches gringos de Arizona". That's pretty funny. It would seem that not many people are huge USA fans here. Especially of Arizona... Thanks GOP.


Also, the last picture is Rubén's sister Melissa. I haven't seen her since she was a baby but she asked me to take a picture. She helps me out with my Spanish, sometimes.

Día 7

Today I woke up pretty sick. I took a lot of meds and painkillers and tea, and felt good enough to leave the house before 6:30. So we left. We went to UNAM and Rubén enrolled in school. We also went to the neighborhood of Coyoacán, way downtown where Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky once lived. It was a nice place. There were a lot of fancy houses and restaurants, and a huge population of Criollos (Mexicans directly/mostly descended from conquistadores, or white spanish.) By the middle of the day, I felt much better.

Día 6

Today was a long day. Today was a crazy day, too. Today, we went to El Zocalo, the Times Square of México City. From there, we visited la Oficina Nacíonal de Correo, the National Post Office. That was pretty cool. They had vintage stamps from every world cup since 1910, they had imported structures from foundries in Italy, and they had floor upon floor of gilded rooms full of mail. And freight bicycles that they rode into the post office to collect the mail and then go back out again. That was pretty cool.

Afterwards we went to El Palacio de Bellas Artes, or the palace of fine arts. There were fine arts. We saw one of the most famous paintings in the history of México, the Man at the Crossroads by Diego Rivera. It's an amazing painting. It's meant to be a dichotomy between capitalism and communism in the 20th century, right before the beginning of World War II.

After leaving the Museum, we walked a little more along the streets, had coffee, and came up on the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown. It was huge. It was amazing. Directly in front of it was the Plaza de la Constitución, the Tian An Men of México. (without the violent history.) Downtown here is where they have they expensive franchised shops, such as Starbucks, Holiday Inn, Nike, and Adidas. Also, in the square there were a lot of open-air markets- I bought a chess set there, and also participated in an Aztec cleansing ritual. That was pretty cool. Ironically some strange stuff happened to me later.

Later, after we'd gone home, we went to play more soccer at the same place. On the way there, the car overheated and wouldn't start, and we locked it at a Tienda nearby to where we were going and took Bicitaxis the rest of the way. I met Rubén's aunt who told me a little about Cancún. I have a friend who just came from there, but it's interesting to see how expensive Cancún is, in fact. We ended up not being able to play today, which was bad luck number two. We returned to the car and started it again, now that it had cooled down, and even brought an extra battery, but the car wouldn't go. After a while, we got the car to start, but it would drive for about 200 feet and then break down again. After this happened twice, we pushed it to a nearby house that belonged to Rubén's grandfather (he owns properties and cars all over the city). Since there were 5 of us, Rubén, Adrian, Axel, and their friend Lalo who also works at Ranchería, pushing the car around wasn't a big deal, unlike when I try and push my car. I hate that. But anyway... We took the car there, which was a noisy and tiring business. And then we met Rubén's great-grandmother, who lived there, and had been alive during the regime of Emiliano Zapata, and will be 100 this year. That's amazing. I had a lot of questions, but I don't speak Spanish. Anyway, we left and took buses back to Ecatepec and then to the house. So, my luck wasn't that great today. But we'll see.

Mensaje por mis padres (Message to my parents)

I called you today. You seem to be keeping up with the blog, but could you answer the phone next time? Or you can email me or something... but really. take some time out to see that i'm alive...