do you want me to tell you how many kids you're going to have?

another week begins anew in mexico city. i am into my fifth week at work, which i somehow find very hard to believe. it's the same confusion i often felt when i was in france in college, where i couldn't figure out if the time was crawling or flying by. regardless, for the amount i want to accomplish in my internship by the end of the summer, i've got my work cut out for me. i have gotten organized and have a plan for how i am going to attempt to do it all. this plan is now five hours old, so we'll see how it holds up.

this weekend was a great one. i had my spanish class after work on friday... in fact, i have it after work everyday. it's just three weeks long, which i figured i could manage, but it's tough to give up the better part of my evening after getting used to just lounging around and doing whatever i wanted. we're an interesting crew in the class... there is another person here from the states (though originally from taiwan) - he's a grad student in the international studies program at johns hopkins and is here working for the taiwanese consulate. so our situations are pretty similar. i don't know as much about the third - we are only three in the class, so it's almost like a private tutorial - besides that she is polish and probably quite a bit younger than me, and, well, not so swift on the spanish. the biggest problem is that you can't hear a difference when she says words ending in -a vs. -e. we are reviewing the subjunctive, where -ar verbs change from an -a ending to an -e ending and -er verbs change from an -e to an -a ending. i think you see where i am going with this. most of friday was spent with her conjugating a verb in the subjunctive, the professor correcting her, then her repeating the verb exactly as she had said it the first time, and so on until the teacher had to trust that she was saying what she was supposed to be saying and not what it sounded like she was saying. and so it went.

later friday evening i headed into the plaza, which is the center of everything, in coyoacán. i had an ice cream and strolled around, then took a seat to people-watch. it wasn't long before the man sitting near me approached. he wasted no time informing me that he is a palm/tarot card reader. i am not one for new-age amusements in general, and certainly not one for anything that claims to predict the future. i didn't convey this to him, so he continued with "do you want me to tell you how many kids you're going to have?" i politely declined, telling him that i - perhaps oddly - prefer not to know things about the future but rather to live them. he seemed to respect that but continued to chat me up. he was really friendly and i got a generally harmless feeling from him, so i took the opportunity to practice my spanish a bit. he then suggested we see a movie or have coffee sometime, which i declined, but told him that i could stop by and visit him at the plaza, since he is there every evening. the most bizarre part is that i wasn't just saying that. it was nice to have a little social interaction that was unrelated to where i work or live.

a few minutes later a young man, who felt noticably less harmless - his facial hair was far too thought-through and manicured - approached and chatted me up in english for a bit. he apparently had a bet with his friends that related to the existence of gondolas set up in the middle of supermarkets to sell things. i still don't understand it, but he went away after awhile. as he was leaving he asked for my number, almost as an afterthought, and seemed annoyed when i told him i don't have a phone... it was the best i could up with on the spot. i waited for awhile for an outdoor table to open up at a nearby cafe, but relented when it started to rain since no one appeared to be moving anytime soon anyway. home i went to do my laundry in the sink... and just as i was rolling in the new california girls were headed out to go dancing. so the feeling old thing didn't take long to set in. they went off to shake their booties while i spent my friday night at home washing my undies.

saturday i got up relatively early and planned my day. first i went to a vegetarian cafe near my house for chilaquiles. there may have been some gringo sabotage going on, because they were the spiciest thing i have ever willingly ingested... i am convinced that not even a mexican could eat them without a problem. i tried to enjoy them nonetheless, and had some fresh squeezed o.j. and coffee to help counter the spiciness. there was a nice guy sitting next to me reading the paper and we chatted for a bit... he was a professor of economics and political science at the national university (UNAM -- student body of 200,000. and that's not a typo.) so i asked him for his take on the elections. my mistake delving into somewhat complex territory, but i got the gist of the four outcomes he could see happening. just don't ask me to restate them.

after breakfast i went into town to this incredible artisans' market. taxco unleashed the arts and crafts buying monster in me and now i can't stop. so i spent a long time strolling and browsing and buying. it was a great spot, and i will definitely be returning. after that i walked in the general direction of the historic center. i stopped at the museum at the alameda that houses one of the many diego rivera murals around town. it's called a dream of a sunday afternon at alameda park and it was really striking... it traces many decades of mexican history, all set in the alameda. i didn't think i would like his stuff... mostly because i didn't want to like it since he seemed like such a jerk in frida... but i have come around to it just the same. i paid my 5 pesos to be able to take pictures, and will hopefully get to post them online once i have the brendan-engineered photo posting scheme underway.

i spent some more time strolling around town and taking in the start of AMLO demonstrations that would culminate with the march and rally yesterday (unbelievable photos here). i went home feeling pretty beat, stopped at the grocery store and made some food. later i headed to a party for a friend of jennifer's... it was a lot of fun and i realized what a month of not consuming any alcohol means for my tolerance which added an element of surprise to the evening. i chatted a good bit with gillian, who is a good friend of jennifer's and works for a sister organization, catholics for the right to decide, and i tried to chat a bit with miguel, jennifer's partner. i still get intimidated, because any time he says anything where there aren't context clues i cannot understand a word. fastest talker ever. i was especially pleased when the music was turned up and the dancing started. i was only a spectator, but these mexicans can dance. it was amazing. when i got home at 3am i immediately called brendan to tell him that we *will* make good on our long discussed but yet unrealized dancing lesson date, and salsa comes first.

sunday was kind of wash since i was so tired from saturday. i have gotten very used to a 10:30 bedtime so 3am did not sit so well with me. i hung around coyoacán (sunday market... bought more stuff!) and read quite a bit of On Beauty (zadie smith)... it's wonderful. i should know to expect nothing less.

i am bracing myself for this evening's spanish class... we'll see what the professor has worked out in terms of strategy for our little mismatched trio. i can only hope that the protracted subjunctive review is behind us.