¡Ay, Caramba!

So the days are going by slowly but surely. Work is same old same old. I've been a little more frustrated recently just because I've been lacking direction on some of my projects and the people who have the answers to my questions are all on vacation. I've also been having a terrible time using excel to organize these silly contacts. If anyone out there happens to be an excel expert, please contact me.

Anyway, after several consecutive weekends of traveling, I decided to take it easy these past several days. I've spent a lot of time studying for the GREs and hanging out at the house. Saturday night, I finally made it out of the house and went with Anaïs to meet Lauren and others at a bar in Condesa. But unfortunately, by the time we got there, everyone had already changed locations, leaving Lauren by herself to greet me. Lauren seemed pretty tired, so we acquiesced (it's the GRE talking) her pleas to move to a bar closer to her house. After a semi-lengthy walk in the opposite direction of the Condesa nightlife, we arrived at a lame looking bar. Since Anaïs had to study the next day and Lauren was on antibiotics, no one seemed particularly interested in going to the bar, so we decided that we would look to meet up with friends at a Mama Rumba, a salsa club, and Lauren would just head home. So began our trek to Mama Rumba. Several blocks, a metrobus ride, three sets of directions, and a short cab ride later, we found Mama Rumba, only to discover that our friends had already left, and they wanted to charge us a 100 peso cover to go in. In the end, we probably should have just watched a movie at home. O well.

Sunday morning, Noah, Kerry, and I left the house early to go hiking at desierto de los leones. Since el desierto is still part of df, we were able to take a 5 peso pesero ride all the way to the mountains. Desierto de los leones is one of Mexico's largest national parks, and when you're hiking through pine trees and passing deer, it's hard to believe that you're still in Mexico City. Although Desierto de Leones means "Desert of the Lions," it has nothing to do with deserts or lions. "Desierto" comes from the fact that the monks who lived in the monastery on top of the mountain referred to their residences as "desiertos," while the "Leones" where the original owners of the land. There is something very majestic about this monastery with its well maintained gardens, the classical music echoing through its bare hallways, and its castle-like atmosphere. When we reached the gardens at the back of the monastery, we were surprised that the classical music that we had heard earlier was actually coming from a full live orchestra. We stopped to listen for awhile and I was shocked as they began to play a medley from Chicago the musical. Razzle-dazzle in Mexico just felt weird. When we finished perusing the monastery, we grabbed some food at an outdoor grill with a great view of the woods. I noticed a bunch of old ladies sipping a post-meal hot drink out of terracotta mugs, so I asked the waitress to bring me one. The drink was actually a dessert beverage made with sweet milk and rice. It was delicious. I'm amazed that this drink/dessert is so popular all over the world. I've had some sort of rice pudding concoction at Greek and Indian restaurants before, and now I can add Mexico to the list. After lunch, we tried unsuccessfully to find one of the designated hiking trails, so when we passed something that looked like it might be the mouth of a trail, we eagerly began our caminata (hike). Unfortunately, this hike didn't provide any breathtaking views, but the time we spent in the non-polluted (well less than df, anyway) nature was still worth it. We scaled the mountain for about an hour before turning around to head back towards the monastery, but we got a little lost on the way down and ended up at bus stop along a major highway. Thankfully, the buses were headed in our direction and we eventually made it home.

Tuesday after work, I decided to hang out in Condesa and spend some time at Lauren's apartment. We ordered delivery empanadas from a nearby Uruguayan restaurant and the three of us (Eric included) psychoanalyzed each other's idiosyncrasies for a couple of hours. Around 10pm, I grabbed a cab and headed back towards San Angel for Noah, Marketa, Jacob, and Sam's despidida (good bye party). We went to an Argentinian restaurant and didn't get our food until midnight (though I didn't order anything since I had already eaten dinner). Totally exhausted, we made it home around 2am and I promptly passed out. Oh...I've also totally forgotten to mention newcomer Carine to the house. She's been here for about two weeks and she actually first arrived in Mexico with Anaïs way back in April. She's also doing an international MBA program in Mexico, but she's a semester behind since she opted to flee back to France when swine flu broke out. She's very cool.

On Thursday, Allison and I decided to check out el Museo de Papalote (Museum of Kites), an interactive children's museum that is super cool. Although we were originally drawn to the museum by the bus terminal promos advertising an adult evening with a live jazz band and cocktails, we pretty much completely ignored that area of the museum and spent all of our time playing with all the cool toys! I also had my first experience inside a planetarium, which was awesome. I just wish we had gone to the museum a little earlier because two hours just wasn't enough time to play with everything. When the museum closed at 11pm, we grabbed a cab and headed back to Allison's apartment so I could pick up my computer. Unfortunately, the cab driver on the way back ripped us off, charging us three time what we paid to get to the museum, even after I argued with him in excellent Spanish. O well..but what's worse is that I then had to take a cab back from Allison's apartment in Condesa to my house in San Angel. I decided it would be best to call a cab, but unfortunately, the only taxi service I had in my phone is based in San Angel, and they charged me for the roundtrip ride, which I didn't realize I was paying for until I got to my house. In the end, I spend about 13 dollars to get home from Condesa, which I realize is a bargain anywhere in the US, so I tried not to get too mad about it.

Friday, I was super unproductive at work. And that night, I was even lazier, opting not to travel by myself up to Condesa for Eric's (from IMIFAP) despidida, and choosing instead to watch Legends of the Fall with my housemates, which I had never seen before.

And then this morning, Saturday, I left my house around 1pm to meet Allison and Lauren at Bizarre Sabado, a market really close to my house, to buy some souvenir gifts. But when I got there, neither one of them answered their cell phones. After an hour of wandering and repeated unanswered phone calls, I walked irritatedly back to my house. Evidently, Lauren and Allison had both accidentally left their phones at home....they apologized several times when they got back to their apartments, so I guess I forgive them.....

And that's all for now. More updates to come.

So last weekend was a busy one. On Saturday I went to Cholula and Puebla, two colonial cities about two hours outside of DF. And Monday I spent floating down the canals of Xochimilco.

But first, Friday night stories! So at the end of work on Friday, pretty much the coolest things that's ever happened to me happened. The Mexicans asked us to go out with them to a cantina! So Lauren, Eric, and I went with Luis, Marco, Arizbe y otros to a restaurant in Coyacán (Frida's neighborhood). We went straight from work to the restaurant, and then straight form the restaurant to a discoteca in tlalpan, a colonia way south of san angel. A couple drinks later, Lauren and I decided that the music was too loud, so we left after an hour or two and took a sketchy pesero with Eric back up north to the Perisur metrobus stop. It took forever to get home, but it was worth it.

Early Saturday morning, Lauren and I made the trip to Tasqueña to catch the bus to Puebla. I'd say the main attraction of Puebla is actually its neighboring town Cholula (like the hot sauce), where the largest pyramid in the world was built over 2000 years ago. Too bad it's been so poorly maintained over the years that it now just looks like a really big grassy hill. Cortés didn't even notice the overgrown brush as a monument when he arrived in the 1500s, selecting the spot to build the first of his many churches. Even though the pyramid isn't as much fun to climb as the pyramids at Teotihuacan, you can take a guided tour of the excavated tunnels underneath pyramid, which was pretty cool. Evidently, there were some major renovations thousands of years ago because there are now four distinct layers of the pyramid (which you can hopefully see in my pictures). After we walked under and around the pyramid, we had to take the hike to the top to see Cortés's church. The church itself is beautiful and offers pretty amazing views of Mexico, including a nice angle of the volcanoes Popo and Ixta, which after traveling Hawaii, hardly seem remarkable. After we finished at the pyramids, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then hopped a pesero back to to the center of Puebla.

Puebla was ok. It's a pretty colonial town, but there's nothing that interesting there. We passed by the house where the Mexican Revolution started in 1910, complete with bullet holes in its facade, but the house was closed by the time we got there. We tried to look into the town's theater, one of the oldest in the Americas, but there was a show and we weren't allowed. And then we walked through an artists' alley, where we looked through windows of different painters and ogled the crafts of local artisans, but we didn't buy anything. After a couple hours in Puebla, we decided to head back to the bus station for the two trip back to DF. I was pretty tired when I got home, so I spent the evening doing laundry and watching tv.

Sunday morning, I met Lauren and her roommate Eric at Tasqueña, yet again, to catch a ride on the tren ligero (light rail) to Xochimilco, a colonia in the very southern part of DF. Xochimilco was an agricultural center a thousand years when local farmers decided to fill in parts of the large lake to create more fertile plots of land. The floating gardens resulted in a series of canals only navigable by small rafts. A thousand years later, the gardens aren't used for growing anything but local flowers, and the canals have been converted into a tourist attraction, filled with hundreds of boats carrying large families and European tourists. Along with all of the gondolier-driven rafts, there are also dozens of food vendors, mariachis, and craftsmen trying to sell their goods and services to water-trapped tourists...and man was everything expensive, three times the prices on land. Since we were also tourists, and we didn't go with a Mexican, it was really hard to tell how much we were getting ripped off, even after bargaining down the prices of everything, I'm sure we were taken advantage of. After the two hour boat ride, we went straight back to DF, and I spent the rest of the evening at home.

Last week at work was pretty typical. I've been spending a lot of time with Maca, the receptionist, categorizing all of the contacts in her Outlook, which haven't been touched in IMIFAP's history. Everyone once in awhile we come across some noteworthy person that Susan has met in the last 25 years, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Queen of Sweden, Sara Stuart (Martha Stuart's daughter), Carlos Slim (one of the richest men in the world), among other Latin American ex-Presidents and influential millionaires. But for the most part, it's a pretty arduous task.

On Friday, Susan asked to meet with me to discuss the time I've spent at IMIFAP. She asked me if I felt like I had learned anything, what I felt was missing from my internship, and what I planned on doing in my future. I told her that I had learned a ton about public health sector and non-profits, enough to consider pursuing a degree in public health. I also told her that I was happy that I've been able to support IMIFAP in the way that I have, but I felt like I hadn't been given the opportunity to do what I was told I would be doing when I arrived at IMIFAP: writing grant proposals and academic articles (even though I was given an interesting article to work on last week, about the valuation of life based on life lost to breast and cervical cancer, what a great combo of economics and medicine!). So she told me, ok, then let's get you some more articles. By the end of the day, I had two more academic articles in my inbox. Now all I need to do is find journals to get them published, and then edit the papers to fit the regulations of the journal, plus add a few sentences here and there, and then I get my name on the paper! It will probably take me longer than two weeks to get these done, so I'll likely be working on them when I get back to the States, which is a good thing since I have the entire month of August with nothing to do....except study for and take the GRE. Ugh. That was a recent development. Since I've started to consider applying to publish health schools, which all require a GRE score, I've decided that I have to take them before classes start since applications to those kinds of schools are usually due at the end of December. Fun.

Also, last Thursday, I went out with some housemates for a late dinner and drinks at a bar that recently opened up near ITAM campus, the university that hosts everyone's exchange program. The bar was great - not too loud, great food, and inexpensive drinks. When we finished, we decided to continue our evening at plaza loreto. Too bad plaza loreto is dead on Thursday nights. After entering and leaving two totally empty clubs, we ended up at King's Pub, which I've already been to. We finally headed home around 3am and I promptly went to sleep. It's a good thing I made it on time to work the next day to have that 9am meeting with Susan.

One last unrelated thing...In Mexico, you are never safe from street vendors. Wherever you go, there is someone trying to sell you something - candies, clothes, random chach-kis, dvds, cds, hammocks, body lotions, horseback rides, food. And literally everywhere, whether you're on a boat in the canals at Xochimilco, at the top of they pyramids at Teotihuacan, in the metro cars, relaxing on the beach, walking through the park, even inside your house. At all times of the day I hear random noises coming from the streets, from guys yelling to bike horns to steam-powered whistles to prerecorded tapes. It took me forever to figure out what the noises were, but I eventually realized that each one is someone selling something, and these branded noises are their way of letting people know that they should come out of their house and buy stuff. The only noise that isn't a vendor is a loud bell that rings whenever the trash trucks come by. Evidently they don't have set days to pick up garbage here, you just have to run outside with your trash when you hear the bell.

Ok. That's it for this week. Ttyl.

So somehow it's been two weeks since my last blog post. I guess nothing TOO exciting has happened, but let's just start from the beginning, shall we?

On Monday two weeks ago, we welcomed a new intern to the office. Christian is a PhD student in economics at the University of Chicago. He's a little older than the other interns and he's German. Since we've run out of space on the third floor, Christian works on the second floor, so I don't really interact with him that often except for occasional lunches, though he seems nice. Other than that, there haven't been any huge changes at the office, unless Samantha considering a break from her vegan lifestyle counts as news...

Also last week, I talked with Shoshana about all of the projects I've been working on in the last few weeks and I inquired about any upcoming projects that I should expect. I asked because I haven't worked on a single grant proposal or written any academic articles, which is what I was told I would be doing at IMIFAP. At the end of the meeting, she told me she would ask Susan for some projects for me. On Friday, I received 3 proposals, the chance to work on a research paper in Spanish, and a bunch of other tasks. This along with my email newsletter project and the huge task of organizing the contacts database, plus all of the other little things I've been working on. I'm totally swamped, which is a good thing. I'm definitely more productive when I have more things on my plate and it feels good to cross lots of things off my to-do list. I also had the pleasure of presenting the new online database application at a meeting with Susan, Shoshana, Hector (CFO), and Maca (the receptionist). It was the first meeting I've led in an office setting, and it was in Spanish. At the end I asked Susan how it went, and she said that my Spanish was very good, that I only used two words that didn't exist in Spanish (ha), and that I just need to speed it up a little more. I was pretty satisfied with how it went.

Last Friday night was the first time Lauren, Allison, and Eric came down from Condesa to go out in San Angel. We went to a UK themed bar called "King's Pub" and we had a great time. We left pretty early because I had to get up early on Saturday to catch a bus to ACAPULCO. The man who owns my house in DF also owns a hotel in Acapulco and was kind enough to offer us rooms for a discount, which we were happy to take advantage of. At 6am on Saturday morning, Marketa, Noah, Jacob, Sam, and I took a taxi to la Tasqueña, the southern bound bus station in DF. fter a five hour bus ride filled by Die Hard 4, Santa Claus 3, and Mamma Mia, all dubbed in Spanish, we arrived in Acapulco. As soon as we walked out of the bus station, we were accosted by several taxi drivers, who all spoke English, offering us ridiculously high fares. When we realized that they were a legitimate taxi service, we hopped in two cabs and spent 30 minutes sweating ourselves to Pie de la cuesta, a quieter suburb of Acapulco. The hotel was nice. Large rooms with sitting areas and balconies, a private beach adorned with swinging beds and hammocks, a pool, and a full bar. Unfortunately, there was no air conditioning, the decorative canopy over the bed turned out to be a very necessary mosquito net, and the food was incredibly expensive. I generally have mixed reviews of Acapulco. Although it was nice to lounge on the beach, it was way too hot, over a hundred degrees, and more humid than any weather I've ever experienced. I could barely breath and the sweating never stopped, and this coming from someone who goes running midafternoon in DC summers. Also, not only were the restaurants extremely overpriced, but none of them had air conditioning! There was no escape from the heat, except the pool. Fortunately, the beach season hasn't started yet, so the hotel was mostly empty.

After two days of lounging at the hotel, we decided we would venture into Acapulco for an evening. Since we didn't want to spend another 200 pesos on a taxi, we took a 5 peso pesero ride to get downtown. The peseros and buses in Acapulco are pimped out. The bus was painted electric blue with matching seats and an awesome mural of Jesus on the back wall. Where the last row of seats used to be now stood a gigantic sub-woofer. The aisle and roof were covered in blue neon lights and whenever the bus was in motion, the overhead lights went out and the music went up. It was probably the most fun ride I've ever had on public transportation. The mains strip in downtown Acapulco is quite impressive, lined with bars and restaurants and several "to-go" bars, literally store-front bars, like an ice cream parlor or hot dog stand. The drinks weren't actually too expensive, with several bars offering open bar specials for only 200 pesos (like $17), but the food was still absurd for Mexico, charging 100 pesos for something like guacamole and chips (remember my entire lunch in DF is 30 pesos). We finally decided on a place to eat and we sat downstairs on their outdoor patio along the public beach. Right next to our table was the base of a bungee jumping platform, and we watched several people jump off the 100 meter stage and dip their heads in the pool below. As we finished eating, a team of waiters quickly converted the dining area into a club venue, and as we paid our a bill, a swarm of girls came down the stairs dancing to music that started out of nowhere. We were all pretty zapped by the sun, so we left before the party really started and retired back to our hotel in Pie de la cuesta. We left on Monday in the afternoon and arrived at Alpina around 11. I'm happy that I went to Acapulco, I got to swim in the Pacific Ocean for the first time and enjoyed reading on the beach and relaxing in the sun, but I don't know if I'd readily go again. Don't worry, pictures to follow.

I think that's all for now. Good night.

So it's been a whole week since my last blog entry, and this one is going to be epic. New interns at the office, party in Condesa, sleepovers, Teotihuacan, 4th of July, and Taxco. So let's dive right in, shall we?

This week at the office we greeted some new people and said goodbye to others. On Monday, we welcomed Samantha, a new half-Mexican intern from LA who is super laid-back and and so much fun; at the end of her first day, she invited all of us to a party at her apartment just east of Condesa - more on that late. On Tuesday, the office welcomed back Jim, another Penn alum who has worked at IMIFAP for the past year, but took an extended break to travel and visit family back in the states. Jim is also very chill and looks eerily like Luke Wilson. Both are great additions to the office, but this week, we also had to say goodbye to Eric. He has officially finished his internship with IMIFAP and is now looking to do some traveling before finding a more permanent job. Good luck to him.

My email marketing newsletter project has consumed all of time in the last week, which is a good thing I suppose. I enjoy writing the newsletters and pioneering this initiative with our new email service provider software, but I've started to get very frustrated with the micromanaging at IMIFAP. Everything that I do requires multiple revisions or total overhauls. Nothing I produce is good on my first attempt and I have a feeling that nothing ever will. I've also started to get jealous of the work that other interns are doing, though they've assured me that their projects aren't that interesting either. Lauren, for example, has continued writing grant proposals and recently had her name added to an academic article that Susan and Martha wrote on breast and cervical cancer. Although the article hasn't been accepted for publication at any journal yet, it's likely that it will eventually find its way into some academic literature and Lauren will be a published author (in Spanish)...and that's a baller opportunity that I seem to be missing out on. And this article would have been a good extension of my research in family medicine at Penn...bummer. I'm still happy with my experiences at IMIFAP so far, at least I've gained plenty of exposure to the non-profit and public health fields.

At Alpina, things have turned very quiet. Since the semester has finally ended (super late because of the swine flu), many tenants have moved out or chosen this time to travel. This weekend, David returned to his home in Monterrey to visit his family, Jacob went with his rugby team to Guatemala, and Anaïs and her mother left for a 10 day trip to the Yucatán peninsula. Since Anaïs's mother speaks very little English or Spanish, I've had the opportunity to practice my French in the last few days, and it has made me feel sooo much better about my Spanish. Ha! This week I also made progress in my quest to like mushrooms. Jacob offered to make me dinner one night and he chose to make a very very mushroomy beef stew dish, and i actually enjoyed it, but man were there a lot of mushrooms.

On Friday night, people at the office decided to meet for dinner at Condesa before heading to Samantha's party. We opted to eat at an Uruguayan restaurant just a few blocks from Lauren's apartment where we all ordered a variety of empanadas. The empanadas were cheap and delicious, what set us back was the delicious bottle of Malbec that we ordered with dinner, valued at 320 pesos, or 16 times the price of an empanada. But like I said, delicious. After dinner we headed back to Lauren's apartment where her colorful landlord David entertained us with fruity cocktails and stories of previous tenants, including our supervisor Shoshana! Good times. When we had finished the pitcher of raspberry jell-o flavored drinks, we left for Samantha's party.

By the time we had arrived at the party, Samantha had already retired to her room for the evening after having a few too many drinks. She did eventually appear and was a wonderful hostess, strongly encouraging us to salsa dance with her and some other party guests. It was actually a very fun time. When the music died down, we left Samantha's apartment and headed back towards Lauren's. Since we were planning to travel north to Teotihuacan early on Saturday morning, we all decided it would be impractical for me to take a taxi by myself back to my house in the south just to wake up a few hours later to travel twice as far to the bus station in the north, so I spent the night on the red velvet ottomans at Lauren's apartment.

In the morning, after a quick face washing and borrowing a clean shirt form Eric, we were on our way to the northern bus station in DF. Teotihuacan is just an hour outside the city, and after the short ride, we were at the ruins of the largest city in the world circa 100 AD. The archaeological site is most noted for its two large pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun being the third largest pyramid in the world after the Great Pyramid of Cholula in the Mexican city of Puebla and the Great Pyramid of Giza. I could go on for quite awhile about this precolombian civilization, but I figured that I would just let the pictures speak for themselves (which I hope to post sometime tomorrow). When we left the fenced-in site starved and ready to eat, we were accosted by about twenty 12-16 year old boys waving menus in our face. Apparently, they don't allowed food vendors near the pyramids to prevent littering, so they just let tourists get attacked by throngs of Mexicans instead. In the end, we found an Americanized cantina that served hamburgers, milanese chicken, and alfredo pasta, among other American and some Mexican foods. We made it back to DF around 5 and prepared to walk the short distance to the Fourth of July party that Shoshana had invited us to. When Lauren woke up from her catnap and Eric and I finished our homemade lattes, we went to go get ourselves some burgers and dogs.

We arrived at the nicest apartment I've seen in Mexico around 8pm. Decked out in contemporary furniture and complete with a billiards table and a second story sun room with a wrap around porch, this ninth floor apartment was the perfect place to throw a party. After several beers and mingling with people from all over the world, we managed to spot a couple of fireworks over some of the shorter building off in the distance. Then, while I was having a very enlightening conversation with two Mexicans at one in the morning about how Mexicans can't just buy a plane ticket and visit the US, I receive a text message from Marketa (my Czech housemate) saying that we're leaving for Taxco (pronounces Tas-co) at 7am. Since I hadn't been home in over 24 hours, this was complete news to me. My new Mexican friends called a safe and secure taxi service that David had given to us the previous night and I made my way home.

I woke up the next morning at 7 on the dot and headed with Marketa, Noah, and Kerry to the Southern bus station for the 2.5 hour ride to Taxco, a small mountain city best known for its inexpensive silver. Taxco is beautiful. Literally situated on the side of a mountain, it's hard to find a single spot in the city that doesn't have a view. The first thing we did when we got there was take the teleferica ride (a cable car) up to one of the mountain's peaks to the city's main resort. Breathtaking. When we finished snapping pictures, we took the cable car back down to the city's main plaza and grabbed some lunch at a pizza place with a rooftop patio. Later, we walked around hundreds of silver shops, grabbed some ice cream, checked out a colonial mansion turned community center/art exhibit, hiked up the mountainous back alleys, got lost in the maze of underground markets, and generally explored the city. In some ways, Taxco reminded me of Greek island Alonisos with its extremely steep roads and alleyways and all white houses. Again, I could go on forever about Taxco, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I really really loved Taxco. I could definitely see myself retiring there 40 years from now. The town is isolated enough to maintain its quaint size and colonial atmosphere, and yet modernized with Oxxo's on every corner, supermarkets, banks, and full cell phone reception. It's also only a three-hour flight from DC + a two-hour bus from Mexico City, making it a more convenient trip than a flight to LA. Just unbelievable.

And that was my week. Definitely my best so far, don't ya think? And I capped it all off with a viewing of the Mask of Zorro back at Alpina. Awesome. Ok. Enough for now. Make sure to check facebook for pictures tomorrow. Good night!

So I forgot to mention a few things in my last post, so let's first revisit Thursday afternoon. When I got back from work, I caught Kerry (American) heading out to go for a run. Since I've been so lethargic lately, I decided that some afternoon runs would be a good way to pep up my weekdays. Kerry likes to run at two different places: UNAM campus and the city-wide nursery at Viveros in Coyacán. On Thursday we went to UNAM. The campus is very large with tons of green space filled with pick-up soccer games and couples making out in the grass. There's also some remnants of volcanic lava rock, but nothing compared to what I saw in Hawaii. The running path itself is mostly just two painted white lines that indicate where to bike/run, though parts are well-maintained lanes that pass by squash courts, libraries, and other school buildings. It wasn't the most beautiful route, but there were lots of people around and it's easy to get to, so it will have to suffice.

Another thing I don't think I've mentioned are my Mexican breakfasts. Sometimes, when I'm running late for work and don't have to time to have a bowl of cereal, I pick up a delicious combination of torta de tamal and etole from a street vendor by my office. Torta de tamal is a kind of sandwich where they scoop out the insides of a roll and fill it with a corn/flour concoction that is mixed with chicken, chiles, and depending on the flavor, some other spices. Etole is the warm drink that typically comes with the torta de tamal, which is also corn based and comes in a bunch of different flavors like chocolate and hazelnut. They're delicious, super filling, and you can get both for 20 pesos. They're so filling that on days where I have a torta for breakfast, I usually only have a licuado for lunch. A licuado is a kind of flavored milk drink. At the Urban Cafe near my office, they blend milk with some ice and mix it was mango, piña colada, or strawberry syrup. They're very good and probably terrible for you, just as terrible as the super heavy torta and etole.

On Saturday morning, I woke up around noon since I stayed up til 2am with Anaise watching Legally Blond on late night tv. She had never seen it before and I thought it was important that I stay up with her to explain the parts the she didn't understand.....Anyway, when I woke up, I made some pancakes and lounged around the house and watched tv. Finally, around 3pm, the English-speakers and I headed to the plaza Loreto to see the Dias de Humo (Days of Smoking) art exhibit. All of the displayed artwork was inspired by the history of the tobacco industry. Black and white photos of field workers, bejeweled cigarette cases, old packs of cigarettes, quotes about smoking from celebrities, and stills of movie stars smoking in popular movies from the past. It was a pretty cool exhibit...I particularly enjoyed the signs placed all over the museum that said "smoking is hazardous to your health, minors not permitted to enter." Good stuff. The rest of the museum hosted a pretty good collection of works from Rodin, Picasso, Miró, and Dalí, among other artists that I didn't recognize. When we finished walking through the exhibit, we noticed that performers were preparing for a show in the amphitheater, so we decided to stay and watch. After 40 minutes of mediocre flamenco and some other type of Mexican clogging, we left and headed to the movie theater to buy tickets for Transformers 2. The best parts of Transformers 2?....Megan Fox and the upper quad. It was fun to be able to point out my freshman year dorm room to my friends in Mexico (if you haven't caught on by now, they filmed parts of the movie on Penn campus). The rest of the movie was a little long and kinda ridiculous, definitely not as good as the first one. The theater, however, was awesome. The cleanest theaters I've ever seen with leather seats and popcorn/soda vendors right in the theater. It was so awesome. And for about the same price a movie in the US, I got my ticket, a large popcorn, a soda, and bag of peanut m&m's. Totally worth it.

On Sunday morning, I went for a run with Kerry at Viveros. To get there, I took my first ride on a pesero, a small bus that runs on a loop but doesn't have specific stops. You have to hail the bus like a taxi to get on and you hit a button near the back of the bus to get it to stop (or rather, to open the doors and slow down). Viveros is the city's nursery. From what I understand, all of the public plants in the city are first grown and maintained in this nursery before they are planted all over DF. Conveniently, there is a 2K dirt track that runs around the gardens with meter-markers. This running route is beautiful. Be sure to see the pictures on facebook (when I post them).

After my run, I went home and took a quick shower before going back to Viveros to meet Lauren and Eric at the Frida Kahlo museum. The "Casa Azul" is where Frida was born and raised, making it an appropriate location for her own personal museum I've decided that Frida was not the greatest artist and that she was only famous because she was married to Diego Rivera and had affairs with Socialist dictators in the 40s. Her art really doesn't do it for me. The house itself was more interesting, laid out in typical Mexican style with a large courtyard in the center and many brightly adorned rooms around the edges. After we left the museum, we walked through the plaza in Coyacán and stopped for some ice cream. I'm getting to the point where all of the plazas and markets look the same. They all sell the same crap and they're all jam-packed on the weekends. The only thing that separated this market from the rest were the adorable 6 week-old puppies that one vendor was selling. I really wanted to take one home, but I don't think they allow pets in my house....We also stopped at a cantina in the plaza and tried mezcales for the first time. Mezcal is a type of tequila. They serve it in a shot glass with a chile coated rim and with chile coated lime wedges. There was no escape form the burning!!! You bit into the lime and the chiles made it worse!! What a torturous Mexican practice!! Why would you mix tequila with chiles!?!? Are you crazy??!??!? But I'm glad I had a new experience...

After my mezcal experience, we all headed home and I've been watching the Mexico vs Ghana soccer match on tv ever since. Shame USA lost their 2-0 lead to Brazil. Now I have to find something to eat! Hasta luego.