Sock tan gone?

Perhaps, but it has been replaced by something else...

World Cup

Mexico's run in the World Cup ended yesterday, but I'm pretty sure that soccer will still grip the country until the end of the tournament on July 11th.

Nonetheless, the Mexicans put up a good showing of support yesterday in the Zocalo, the main square of Mexico City, where I watched the game with 8 other people I knew and probably 3000+ of our closest friends.

So this was when we were able to get really close to the screen....

To get a better idea of the size of the event, check out this video:

This shows about half of the actual square of the Zocalo, and then there were three additional screens set up outside of the square, on the streets.

Me with some of the other girls from Alpina--(front row from left) Louise (England), Nadhirah (Singapore), Amy (US), Ruth (US)

The approach into the Zocalo

There were people of all ages, from small children to the older folk, cheering on their team, and booing Argentina for each subsequent goal. The first goal, when Argentina was offsides, elicited a group chant of "Puto, puto".

People started leaving at about the 75 minute mark, and I was surprised at the lack of follow through support. But I guess they just wanted to beat the crowds out. I've been told that the scene can amount to rioting when the Mexicans win, so in a way I'm glad they did not, though it would have been fun.

One of the news channels (mic said Fox Sports) started interviewing people around us towards the end of the game. It seems that the more versions of the Mexican flag you are wearing, the greater chance you have to be interviewed. After the game there were also large groups of people congregated around cameras, singing, chanting and jumping in order to get on TV.

Being in Mexico, and watching the Mexico games alongside them, as well as other games that happen to be on during lunch, has left me with a newfound appreciation for the sport of soccer, though a bit baffled at the over-exaggeration of injury.

Always Sunny in Mexico?

So today brought some of the strangest weather I've seen so far. It has been raining pretty consistently at about 6pm for an hour or so for the past week, but today brought something quite strange. Normally the rain starts out light, then goes into downpour and then lets up again for the rest of the night.

Today however brought something different. Hail. For about 10 minutes we had pebble sized hail, followed by pouring rain. This made the street in front of Alpina turn into a river, and knocked the power out for over 2 hours.

I don't think the pictures quite do it justice, but it was pretty intense.

Copa Mundial

So it's official, Mexico is continuing in the World Cup, while South Africa and France have ended their run. I'm excited that Mexico is going on because it means the the country will continue to be in full out World Cup fever, and rooting for their team. It makes for a great game watching experience, and means that every couple of days, fútbol takes precedence over work.

A Night/Day on the Town

So last night was my first time going out in the Mexican sense of the term. It was a lot of fun, but definitely not something I am able to/ want to do regularly. Staying out until 3am takes a lot out of you, and although it can be fun sometimes, I like having daylight hours at my disposal more so than night hours.

Anyway, I went out to dinner and then to a concert with Sayel and some of his friends. I met Sayel last weekend when we went to the pyramids. We ended up going to Koreatown near downtown Mexico City. I never would have thought that my first experience with Korean food would be in Mexico, nor that I would be among the only non-Asians in a restaurant in Mexico City.

The food was delicious. Koreans eat a lot of side dishes with their meals. We had upwards of 8 or 9, I think, including kim-chi, eggplant, lettuce, bean sprouts, scallion pancakes and many others. I had a spicy beef noodle soup for dinner, which was great, but wasn't very conducive to being eaten with a spoon and chopsticks, the utensils of choice. We also tried soju, a Korean rice liquor. I'm not a big fan of liquor. The throat burning doesn't really do much for me, but it was interesting to try nonetheless.

After dinner we went to the concert of a band of a cousin of one of Sayel's co-workers, and we picked up a couple of people along the way, so in the end I think we were six. It turned out to be ab0ut 5 high-school aged bands each playing 3 or 4 songs. The venue was cool, a cultural center near the Zocalo, the center of Mexico City.

The problem was the acoustics/sound though. The instruments were way too loud and made it impossible to hear the singers, and when you could, many of them weren't very good. It was fun and I met some new people, but every time I go out, I generally tend to confirm my idea that it can be fun occasionally, but is not something I can do every weekend. It took about 1.5 hours to get home, with a lot of walking and a Metrobus ride.

Today I ended up going to the Zocalo again with 5 people from the house I'm living in. The Zocalo is the main square of Mexico City, and all the buildings that surround it are huge. It is quite a sight to behold. All the buildings around that area are very colonial and many of them house the government offices. There is a model of the area in the metro station "Zocalo" and you can see what the buildings look like. There are some pretty amazing courtyards in some of them.

They also cleared out the entire square and put up a giant screen and area to watch the World Cup. They are showing all the games, and today we caught the tail end of the Germany-Australia game. When I went to the Zocalo before, the entire area was full of tents of protesters, but apparently they agreed to move for the World Cup fandom.

The last place we went was the Palacio de Bellas Artes, or the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a cultural center in the middle of Mexico City. It has a theater, but is also home to a many murals by people such as Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Siqueiros and Jose Orozco. My favorite though is the mural by Diego Rivera. It is called El Hombre En El Cruce de Caminos (Man at a Crossroads), and was originally commissioned to be done in the Rockefeller Center in New York, where Rivera painted it, but then it was taken down because of its message, but the president of Mexico later asked Rivera to do it again in Bellas Artes.

I took a couple of pictures, but the quality isn't very good because the mural is huge. It is a really interesting piece of work though, showing different social classes and how science has affected them all (my own opinion). I definitely would suggest looking into it.

Teotihuacan

So last weekend I went to Teotihuacan, an archaeological site north of Mexico City with some of the largest pyramids in the world. I ended up going with three people, 2 Americans and 1 Mexican, who work at CTS, the Center for Sustainable Transportation, an NGO in Mexico City. I met them through David, an MIT grad I met through a friend.

We set out quite early in the morning, meeting up at 8am. This was especially by Mexican standards, where the partying doesn't start until after midnight. It did mean that we got to Teotihuacan before the crowds, and the heat.

Teotihuacan is about 25 miles outside of Mexico City, reachable by a 30 peso (<$3) bus from one of the bus stations at the northern edge of the city. There are two major pyramids, the pyramid of the Sun and of the Moon, as well as many, many other structures. Teotihuacan was once the biggest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, and had contact with other civilizations all across the hemisphere. It fell quickly, going from over 200,000 to just a few thousand in a few years.

The Pyramid of the Sun

Crawling through pre-Columbian sewer systems

Observations

So over the past two weeks I have been noticing some things about Mexico and Mexico City, and I thought I would share. I will probably update with more "Observation" posts as the summer goes on.

1) People here are short (for the most part). I noticed this most when I was in the metro going to check out a bookstore cafe someone recommended to me. During rush hour they have women-and-child only cars in the metro and the metrobus (a bus with a dedicated lane that runs on two of the busiest streets). I was in one of these in the metro, and it was packed, absolutely packed and I was standing up. I was by a head the tallest person in the car, no exception. I have yet to see a Mexican woman who is as tall as I am (not wearing heels). It's not just women either, the majority of men are rarely as tall as I am.

2) The university has a campaign for "igualdad entre hombres y mujeres" which seems to be the unversity's fight against machisimo. It is really interesting to see posters around the campus saying that women can study what they want, and that there should not be violence against women.

3) The previous in a way leads into this observation. There are so many couples here and it is certainly more evident than in the US. Everywhere you go, it is always pairs on benches, lying in the grass, on buses etc. Someone mentioned to me that it is because Mexican girls always want to have a boyfriend, so the boys oblige, but many times are not faithful, which I think is something that stems from machismo. I haven't heard another side of it, but it is interesting to see.

The first (almost) two weeks in Mexico

So I’m writing this sitting in my new residence, the “residencia estudiantil Alpina”, in Colonia San Angel, Mexico City. So far I’ve been in Mexico City for almost two weeks. I arrived last Sunday, having no idea where I was or what I was going to do. I had gone straight to my hostel and was checked in by a very nice woman named Maria. With her I had my first extended conversation in Spanish and showed me that I could actually (kind of) speak in Spanish. Language-wise, things have only been improving since then.

I spent the first couple of days getting to know the area I was in: Coyoacan, a neighborhood in the south of the city that is centered around 2 big plazas. It is a great area with lots of restaurants, shops, parks, and museums, including the Frida Kahlo museum and the Leon Trotsky house. I stayed in a great hostel called Hostal Cuija Coyoacan, run primarily by two women, Maria and Monica. There was a flux of people going in and out, but in the middle of my 8-day stay, 3 other girls arrived. One, Ruth, is a law student who is also working in Mexico City for the summer. The other two girls, Koehler and Emily, were finishing up the last two weeks of a 5-month trip around South America.

I learned about Alpina from Ruth and went to visit it. It is in a different area of Mexico City, about 10 minutes by minibus, but it is a great atmosphere. I moved in on Monday, after my first day of work. There are about 24 students who live in Alpina, from all over the world. Right now is a transition period because a lot of the students who have been here for the semester are about to leave and the summer students are starting to move in. During the school year, there are more Europeans but apparently during the summer it switches to a predominantly North American crowd.

The area of San Angel we are in is not quite as quaint as the part of Coyoacan I was in is, but there are still markets, supermarkets etc. within walking distance. I hope I can spend more time in Coyoacan as the summer goes on, but for now I barely have time after I get back from work.

I have generally been working from 10-5:30 or 6, which means I leave around 9 (It is such a luxury to sleep in) and get back around 6:30 or 7. Then I have been going to the gym, cooking dinner and hanging out for a bit, and then it is time for bed. It is amazing how quickly time goes.

The gym I joined is about 3 doors down from Alpina, even closer than the boathouse. It is quite a funny place. It is run by two older men, Salvador and Ismael. It is basically a body-building gym, with lots of guys who like to lift weights everyday and not do much cardio. There are a bunch of bikes, a couple of treadmills, stair steppers etc., but it is mostly some older women who use them. The guys all lift. It seems like Ismael is the personal trainer of all the people in the gym. The first day I went in, he said “15 minutes on the bike”, and then after fifteen minutes came over and said “4 by 15 sit ups and then 4 by 15 leg lifts”. It will be nice having someone give me a workout occasionally, and I’m glad that it is so close. There isn’t anywhere to run around here because running in the streets is definitely not an option. There are too many cars, and the sidewalks are not quite flat…

I had found a great park a couple of blocks from the hostel, where there are people running every morning, but it is too far from here to go before work. I think I will go on the weekends though. Unfortunately I think this means that I won’t be able to train for the half-marathon I had wanted to do at the end of the summer, but I think I can stay in good shape nonetheless.