Mexico D.F., why, that's Mexico City!

Enjoy! ¡Disfrútense!

Well, as you can see, I did a lot in Mexico City! The first photo is of the absolutely huge cathedral in the Centro Historico of Mexico City. The second photo shows a Diego Rivera (Frida Cahlo´s husband) mural in the palace where Benito Juarez once lived. The others showing the carriages and beautiful building, is the palace built for the viceroys Maximiliano and Porfirio Diaz. There is also a pic of Shauna and I with gardens in the background... this is actually outside of the house of Frida Cahlo. That was actually the best thing in Mexico City, it was so interesting but we couldn´t take pictures inside the house :( Oh! And the huge head picture is of an Olmec head, there were a bunch of them in the Anthropological National Museum. The museum was cool but I can only really take museums in small doses so I only saw a few exhibits.

The next photos are of "La Villa" which is the cathedral and grounds where the Virgin of Guadalupe is displayed. Apparently, next to the Vatican, this church and area is the most visited place of worship in the world.

Finally the pyramids of Teotihuacán! This was my second favourite thing about my Mexico City trip! There are two huge pyramids here, one called the moon pyramid and the other (the largest) called the sun pyramid. I actually still don't know which indigenous group built these but apparently the Aztecs came upon them already abandoned. I do know however that the pyramids were mainly used for a ton of sacrifices :() !!

The last picture is of me on my way down the biggest pyamid. We climbed all the way to the top. It was quite the workout that´s for sure!

On to Nueva Vallarta !!

Okay, well you know I'm skipping a few events... BUT I am trying to include the most important ones. So, the weekend before last I went to Nueva Vallarta (just before Puerto Vallarta) with Jen, Shauna, Laura, Christa, and Russell. We had an awesome time. It was all-inclusive, two nights, so I drank and ate for free and there was a really nice pool and the ocean just steps away. Well... here are some photos!

Well there you have it! Did you like the arm wrestling photos? We found it very amusing at the time. Just so you know... Shauna did not win against Russell as strong as she is. I did, however, beat Jen, but she's a very tiny person so thank God.

Top photo, ze hotel!

Middle left photo, the pool at our hotel

Bottom right photo, Christa and I admiring our wristbands entitling us to the all-inclusiveness!

Terrific Travels to Tonalà

What is this Tonalà I speak of? Well it's a pueblito (little town) just outside of Gdl., and it specializes in artesanía which I don't know how to say in English exactly, but it's like craftmanship I think. This was the first school field trip I took and we got to visit a doll making factory, a paper maché factory, and a glass making factory and then we got to peruse through a bunch of different little shops as well. The cat I am posing with in the photo above is actually unpainted paper maché!

Let´s start at the very beginning...a very good place to start!

People you should know
1st pic Russell and Christa. Christa is the roomate that I hang out with most here. We do pretty much everything together. Russell is her boyfriend. He just recently left, I think he stayed for about two weeks.

2nd pic Shauna (far left), Jen, and Laura. Shauna and Jen go to school with me and Christa. We see eachother pretty much everyday and tend to do a lot of things with them. They are my best classmates :) Laura (yes...another one!) is visiting Jen from California for a whole month! They are all from California.

3rd pic Me and Hilda. Hilda is my host mom. Don´t be frightened! She just looks a little scary in photos but in reality is one of the nicest ladies ever, she refuses to smile in photos though for some reason.

Here are Emilio and Solovino (right). These are the big dogs that I live with. They bark A LOT. And they smell bad. Cute in photos, not in reality.

Here I am !

Hello Everyone! Wow! I am finally taking the time again to update my blog! Are you impressed?? I´m going to put tons of photos up so be prepared!! As you can see in my photo here, I am pointing on a map to where Guadalajara is, in case anyone was wondering... So now I am going to try my best to update everyone on what have been the goings on here in Gdl. over the past few weeks!

Hola Chicos!

Caption: That's like me in Mexico, of course (lol)

So, I see that no one has left any comments for me? Is anyone reading my blog, or has all this typing been in vain. Well anyhoo, today has been a good day so far. We had a test in the morning and it was pretty easy and then...in the afternoon we got to watch an entire movie in Spanish! And guess what it was!! "Music and Lyrics" en español! Who did I watch that movie with?? Pray tell. Anyways it was good the second time around, even in Spanish and now the song is repeating in my head. It turns out that I didn´t go to the salsa thing last night we decided to stay home and study :( How boring! But we DID get to eat churros con chocolate (the chocalate part is actually hot chocolate which is different here and soosooo tasty) so that was a bonus. Tonight I will probably go out somewhere and maybe go to el centro, downtown to go see some mariachi play. It should be really fun. I met these girls from California, Shauna and Jen and we (me and Christa) decided that we like them (heehee) so yeah we´ll go with them tonight. I forgot to tell you guys about the traffic...didn´t I? Well, the traffic, you see, is super crazy and basically everyday you pray to not be runover by a car because the drivers are both inattentive and inconsiderate in my opinion...THEY have the right of way here that's for sure. And the bus is another story. Quite often we are crammed in like sardines and the interior of most of the buses are all pimped out like stickers of the playboy bunny and fuzzy pink things around the rearview mirrors...I must take a picture. The bus drivers also feel like they are racecar drivers or something or at least just really hot sh*t because they drive super fast and the roads...not so smooth. Another cultural note...pretty much everytime Christa and I walk the street we get whistled at yelled at, and honked at by usually-greasy men. Apparently it just means that we`re pretty and it's not sexual harrassment...however, the other day we did walk by two men and they started making blatant and loud orgasm noises which, I have to say, was rather bewildering and someone offensive. These various noises that men make to say "what a beautiful lady" I believe are called 'piropos'. Anyhoo, if you would like to see pictures of Guadalajara and me, please see Christa's blog:
"Misadventures in Mexico" http://christalynnevans.blogspot.com/ because she's got the goods. Well, adios amigos, blog to you later! (what a sign off!)

Salsa, salsa!

Caption: And that's exactly how I looked doing it...

Hello everyone! As the title implies, I took my first class of salsa today. I still have the repetitive music in my head. It was really fun and it was actually quite a workout, I was sooo sweaty. I caught on okay but the partner work with the spins was really hard. Hopefully by the time I leave here though I'll be a pro, well unlikely but let's hope I at least have a few basic moves down. Then I'll show everyone I know how to do it! It's actually really fun. The teacher was sooo crazy good. Well, tomorrow I have a vocab test but I took my placement test when I hadn't slept in over 24 hours so I think I should actually be in a harder class :( Oh well, what can you do. So, thanks to Wendy, I have successfully finished two books here (A handmaid's tale, and Fall on your Knees). They were both really good and now my roommate Christa is reading the former (oh Wendy your goodness spreads). Well, tomorrow night there's going to be salsa at Wallstreet the club I went to last weekend. I think I'll go but I might just go to watch until I'm actually competent. Last night my roommate Katrice and I were watching TV and this horribly low budget movie called ¨Jaded¨ came on after this weird thing about Harry Potter. I'm surprised that Katrice didn't get up to change the channel because she's religious and in the movie a girl gets raped by two women. Maybe because it's a crime....Parts of it seemed a bit gratuitous(i.e. porn-like), and I can't even say that it was actually good because it really wasn't. It seems that here in Mexico they play a lot of english-language movies that no one in Canada or America has ever even seen, probably because they're cheaper to put on TV than movies that are actually good. Has everyone remembered that my birthday is this coming Tuesday? I've started not so subtlely reminiding people about it. I hope that this weekend I'll be able to use Christa's computer and put pictures on my blog. Then you all can see the things that I see! How marvelous the internet is! Well, I don´t have much more to say today but I'll keep you posted (punny!) Everyone please comment on my posts!!

Welcome to my blog!

Caption: Eddie...could it be you?

Cómo están todos? I´m very good! So I just began doing this whole blog thing and as it turns out, I don´t know how to do anything! Like switch the order of things, make fonts bigger. I need a blogging tutorial. Anyways, today all I´ve done so far is gone to class. We learned commands today. Wendy, ¨cierre la boca¨ I won´t tell you what that means, perhaps you know!

Tomorrow I am going to take a salsa class at the university and we´re going to sing a song in class so I´m very excited. We´re supposed to wait to eat lunch until 3 but I already had a taco :) (I got a taco, drink and pudding for only 2 dollars). Not everything is cheap here but somethings are.

Last weekend I went to two different malls here and one of them was really nice. It´s called ¨La Galerias¨and it has a movie theatre and a lot of really cute stores. You know what a popular store is here? Zara. You guys have probably seen it, I think there´s one in WestEd but I´ve never actually gone in it until I got here and it´s actually pretty cute and some things are a little expensive but most of it is about average. I´m going to have to take some pictures of the 2 dogs that I live with and post them on here (even though I don´t really know how :) One of the dogs I like and the other not as much because it barks a lot and really loud. I´ve noticed that a lot of people have dogs here and I have not seen a single cat. I don´t know if I´ve seen ¨Fivel goes West¨ but Christa (i live with her, she´s from Oklahoma), whenever we see a lot of dogs always sings a song from it... ¨there are no cats in america¨ but she replaces america with mexico. It always stays in my head for a while after that. Oh and guess what song I heard at the bar? ¨My girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiime..¨ Who sings that again? I keep wanting to say Eddie Murphy. Let me know. I should upload a relevant photo onto this post? But what to put... I´m much too random. Well, anyway I should be going...when do those of you who have school start school? Hope everythings going well with everyone.