[ Arrival ]

At 2:30 am today (Sunday), my family loaded the car and set off for Des Moines. It was one of the scarier drives I have ever been behind the wheel for, with only one hour of sleep, a headlight out, and thick fog. But we made it safely and, after saying good-byes to the family, I set off for Houston!

On that two hour flight, I managed another half an hour of sleep after snapping the sunrise and fog!

After a brief layover in Houston, I boarded the second flight to Mexico and, with a baby crying both and front and behind me, somehow got another 30 minutes of rest. Both flights went well though!

Flying into Mexico City brought back so many memories of flying into Nepal. That weird vapor was coming out of the baggage compartments. The buildings were all brightly colored and smooshed together. Even the smell was different. Once we landed, I pass without incident through customs and found Danny, one one of the group leaders, on the other side. (I also exchanged money--pesos are so colorful!!!) Kira, Sarah, and I went back to Hotel Juarez, where we met John, the other group leader.

After settling into our rooms (which are really nice!), we got lunch and coffee courtesy of John! :) He then gave us a short tour of the main public square--but more on this place later! 

There was a protest for animal rights walking through.
John explained that there are regular protests since Mexicans are very politically active and maintain this right.

All four of us were feeling pretty tired and decided to head back to the hotel after an hour or so. I finished another article of required reading and nested for a bit before heading back out with Sarah!

All of the architecture has incredible history. There is a lot of European influence, especially from the French and Spanish. In fact, so many buildings of similar style in Spain were torn down, leading Spanish scholars to study the architecture in Mexico City to see what their buildings had looked like! 

This street didn't allow cars and was a neat shopping district. There were tons of European stores--it reminded me a lot of Bahnoffstrasse in Zurich!

There were a ton of people dressed up in the streets like characters or celebrities. Sarah explained that this usually happens anywhere with high numbers of tourists, but they still looked incredible! We returned to the hotel to find the second fleet of students who had arrived: Caroline (my roommate!) and Carie. Caroline opted to stay in, but Carie felt like going for a walk so I went back to the main square (Zápotec) with her! 

Some kites had Batman and Superman on them!

John explained earlier that the guards play music each night.
He joked that it is to tell the city to go to bed!

Tomorrow we will be touring this place more!
But all the stone carvings on the building are incredible.

The three of us hung out in the room for awhile until dinner time! As a full group (we met the final fleet: William, Zev, Josh, and Lucie) we went to a restaurant just down the street that specialized in a traditional kind of soup—pozole. I ordered the Northern-style pozole, which included (was almost entirely) tripe (intestine). I hadn’t realized while ordering, but once I tried it I actually really liked it! Oh, and adding lime is a game changer (sorry I’m so late jumping on that bandwagon, Mom). We picked up some water then had a group meeting in the hotel lobby about safety, health, and daily schedules. After that, even though it was only 9:30 pm, we called it a night because we were all exhausted.

Even Max was ready for some ZZZs!

Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, but I felt ethereally happy and excited all day. Everyone is so sweet, cool, and quirky in their own way. :) Almost everyone is an anthropology major, too! I'm really looking forward to learning more about the subject--both leaders seem incredibly intelligent, as do the students, so it should be a great time! I already feel comfortable here and I have a feeling this month is going to fly by far too fast. 

It has also been intense seeing and hearing so much Spanish. It is so much different than learning it from a textbook or watching videos. To actually see a whole world of Spanish speakers and culture has been so cool. I'm still painfully timid about speaking in Spanish, but everyone on the trip is working on it so I am not alone! One of my high hopes and goals is that by the end of this month I'll be a lot better at understanding spoken Spanish. At least I have people to practice with. :)

Paz y amor,

Abby