our weekend, calorically speaking

recap: mexico city, august 18-21.

in thinking back on my weekend with celene, anne and abbe, the food and drink in which we liberally partook seem to define most of our time spent together. we consistently relied on a just-in-case plan B for food options since the places i most wanted to take them for good mexican eats keep strange hours. well, not strange, but mexican. and i still haven't totally adjusted to the fact that it can be quite a challenge to find something tasty to eat anytime after 5pm, since mexicans apparently subsist only on hot chocolate, corn on the cob, and churros (glorified - but justifiably so - donut sticks) in the evening hours.

the run down of what we ate and drank serves as a pretty good starting point to paint a pretty thorough picture of all that we did with three days in the mexican capital.

i went to meet the girls at the mexico city airport on friday afternoon. my plan to find celene, in from chicago, at the freedom restaurant worked perfectly, though she was left to read her book for awhile since i was an hour late... my morning meeting ran late and taking the metro to the airport (three different trains!) was an even slower prospect that i had anticipated. but we settled in at the restaurant to await anne and abbe, who would arrive a couple of hours later from seattle.

we shared a few victoria beers and ate really, really junky and totally un-mexican nachos that were really gooey and good. anne and abbe found us there and joined us with for aztec soup and desperately needed bottled water. we then found a really expensive - but safe - cab to coyoacan, and after suffering through some friday evening traffic, arrived at my house to unload bags and relax for a few minutes. we were just lounging around - conchita had engineered a complicated furniture removal/cot-corner situation in my room to fit all of us, nice and cozy - when the golden girl herself came in to inquire about our weekend plans and suggest that i take them out to show them around... since when she is on vacation, the last thing she likes to do is stay cooped up, not seeing anything. now that's an idea...

so we headed out, and before long found ourselves seeking out - surprise! - somewhere to eat. we stuck with a taco restaurant i had been to with my sister - since neither of us got violently ill, i figured they had earned my repeat business - and sipped mango agua fresca alongside various types of tacos - abbe and anne both tried two mexico city specialities, huitlacoche (for better or worse, corn mold) and squash flower - and celene orded up a yummy looking huarache. i still haven't fully understood what those are, but the name means "sandal" which appeals to me for some reason. while we were at dinner, it started doing the usual evening downpour thing, so we stayed put and got caught up on everything that has been going on this summer... anne's upcoming move to portland, celene's newlywed-dom and abbe's dating escapades.

when the rain started to let up we stopped at cafe jarocho... my usual coffee spot and a coyoacan institution... for a night cap of cinnamony hot chocolate. we hit the sack soon after, since the ladies had been up since 3am and 5am, and, well, i am always ready for bed. we had planned an excursion for the next day for teotihuacan, which meant a relatively early morning and we all wanted to be well rested for climbing those pyramids.

the next day, we got ourselvess some mochas and hot tea from another of coyoacan's jarocho spots. ate a breakfast of cereal, yogurt and fruit, and then ordered up some sandwiches to take on the road - my parents, sister and i had learned a painful lesson in the quality and prices of food available at teotihuacan - and waited for our cab driver to come get us... there was some confusion about my address, since it was going to be a driver that i hadn't had before coming to get us (i had used this company a lot when my family was here), but i called to clarify and soon enough an unmarked car came peeling down my one-way street the wrong way. i suspected that it was our cab, and indeed it was. that sure bodes well!

and it was indeed a taste of things to come, as we almost lost our lives a number of times as we made our way through mexico city, from south to north before getting on the highway to teotihuacan. we somehow arrived there in one piece - though anne pointed out that after riding in mexico city cabs she now understands why she saw an inordinate number of people in neck braces here - and got a presentation (briefer than the one i got with my parents, who presumably had more money to spend on the over-priced souvenirs at the conclusion of the presentations than our mid-20s crew) on the wonders of the agave plant, the carving of obsidian and how blankets are woven on a loom... we finished it off with the requisite taste of pulque and tequila and went on our way to climb the pyramids. we were there on the early side, and did our best to beat the crowds to the pyramid of the sun -- we made it to the top (with some difficulty) and then scrambled up the smaller pyramid of the moon, no problem.

we strapped ourselves in for another heart-racing ride back to mexico city. our driver had a serious weight problem, and did a lot of heavy breathing, and it turns out that we were all convinced he might drop dead at the wheel from a heart attack and/or TB complication at any moment. after fighting lots of city traffic, we were very happy to be back on solid ground when he dropped us at san angel. we browsed around the saturday market, grabbed anne's first mango of the weekend, and then started on the scenic walk back to coyoacan.

we headed to the market, with visions of quesadillas dancing in our heads, but no such luck... they were shutting down for the day so we gorged ourselves on ceviche, tuna, chicken and crab leg tostadas, pinapple and guava agua fresca and fresh-squeezed orange juice, as fuel for our one and only big night out. we got ready to head to plaza garibaldi, the square just north of the historic center famed for being the birthplace of mariachi music, and grabbed a cab to whisk us there. we hit up a (lemon-lime soda) squirt-infused margarita booth first thing, and made better beverage decisions as the night wore on. we had our share of tequila and beer - served ingenously from a cup with the rim rubbed with lime - with quesadillas and corn on the cob mixed in for good blood alcohol level measure. we called a cab around 2:30 and were out cold by about 4am... though celene was sure to get in a little early dawn crossword-ing first.

we were up and out by about noon the next day... too late for my tamale man, but in plenty of time for another round of 9 peso jarocho mochas and lattes, and waiting for an hour or more to be served at the quesadilla place at the market that we had tried the day before. the wait was long and arduous, but dang did the squash flower, hot pepper, sausage and potato, quesadillas taste good. with our mouths suitably on fire from the innocuous-looking peppers, we set off for chapultepec park and its castle. we took the metro and then settled into a long climb to the castle up on the hill, where we learned a little something about mexico's history and took in some nice views over mexico city... it was an unusually clear day which i have learned to take full advantage of, since they are few and far between.

we hydrated ourselves with water, apple soda and coke afterwards and then hopped back on the metro to check out the historic center. it was a sunday, and there are still AMLO supporter tents set up everywhere, and the place was dead. it felt like a ghost town... but we popped into zara - a vice i first discovered in france with celene and anne - for a little shopping and then walked through the alameda park to get back on the metro and head home.

back at my house, it started to - ! - rain, so we snacked on some chips and guacamole while we waited it out. eventually it let up, so we strolled around coyoacan's weekend market so the ladies could stock up on some goodies to take back. we ended the night with more aztec soup, praise-worthy margaritas (sans squirt) and cajeta-filled churros and some dessert that i think is called ponche that i had always assumed to be pork rinds in a different form (which, in general, is a pretty safe assumption here) but celene informed me otherwise. high on sugar and strong margaritas, we had an extensive cot-based photo shoot back at my house and then turned in.

celene was up and out by 5am, with anne, abbe and i finally getting some coveted tamales from coyoacan's best tamale man before heading into the city for a last souvenir stop at a big craft market called la ciudadela. we topped off our shopping trip with mango and papaya and then went back to coyoacan. they got there things together, and were off before i knew it.

a very full weekend, with very full bellies. it seems appropriate that when i told me coworker mariana about our weekend in our language exchange last week, at the end of it her response was something along the lines of "if nothing else, it certainly sounds like you ate and drank well." i guess she's right.

blackout

have you ever been sitting in an internet cafe, in an urban area, at night, when the power went out? i have. and i was in the middle of my lengthy recap of my weekend spent with my lady friends. with no draft saved. so now i am annoyed and convinced the computer gods are against me, so will save it for later.

the electricity situation here has become unpredictable at best... the power goes out so regularly that, well, at this point it's almost predictable in that way. this evening, following a typically nasty storm, the lights at my house were flickering on and off before going off entirely. rather than sit at home in the dark, i headed to coyoacán's plaza, convinced that the weekend market and all of the businesses in the center part of town would be putting their generators to the test. and indeed they were... you would never even have known the power was out. maybe the generators stole all the juice, thus the dramatic blackout. everything shut down for a few dramatic moments. i looked out the front of my internet spot and couldn't see a thing aside from a car's headlights. it was pretty surreal and i was transported back to the scariest ghost story moments of the sleepovers of my youth. for second, i thought it was pretty neat... until i realized that my lovingly crafted post was lost to cyberspace forever. so i will start again tomorrow.

until then, buenas noches.

a little of everything

this evening, mother nature has decided to stick with her tried and true ritual and pour rain on my head and scream thunder in my ear. so i find myself cozied up at my usual internet cafe to upload my photos on flickr. i am sorry to say, but despite alfredo's best intentions, the fancy file sharing/internet loading plan just ain't panning out. i'm okay with it, and it has even left me to experiment with the upper limitations of my dingy little computer spot. i have multiple flickr pages open and uploading, so an explosion could spice things up at any moment.

i have had an interesting week and a half or so. it was very mellow and meditative/occaisionally lonely, with my crazy new roommates to keep me entertained intermittently, for awhile before three of my closest girlfriends paid me a visit south of the border over the past weekend. anne, celene, abbe and i painted the town red and then some... my feeble blogging efforts of late leave me with a momentous task, but we'll take it a little at a time.

first, under the influence of my young and wild roommates and their innocent-seeming accomplices, i drank one of these. that's all it took to remind me that i am elderly in comparison to these squirts, and that amount (called a "yarda"... and it isn't too far off from what you would imagine a cubic yard to be) of any sort of alcoholic beverage - even unrefrigerated apple cider - should never be made to enter my system. it made for a fun saturday night and a completely useless sunday. they have been friendly in inviting me along when they go out and i was happy to be included... they have a pretty tight-knit crew in their study abroad program - all from UC campuses - and it was fun to get to know some more of them. unfortunately the evening also included an overzealous pursuit from a mexican suitor who first bought me my second (!) yarda, and showed us around san ángel for the rest of the evening. i felt comfortable since he clearly understood my unavailability... but he then persisted to the point of showing up at my front door a few evenings later (we had shared a cab at the end of the night on saturday, which none of us - admittedly - thought twice about)... eventually i made my point understood and thus have had another lesson in just how aggressive mexican men can be. it will be nice to go out with brendan at my side, since out of sight out my mind seems to be the philosophy that rules the courtship day in these parts.

the following week was pretty low key. i had recently discovered the cineplex within walking distance of my house that plays lots of indie and foreign movies and was starting to gobble up anything in the english language that i could get my hands on. so i checked out thank you for smoking (pretty good, overall) and tarnation (horrible, which i knew it would be but it has had a sort of irresistable masochistic appeal for me since i first heard of it). so i passed the time waiting for my girls to come visit with thoughts of the tobacco industry and families troubled by endless histories of severe mental illness. the worst part of suffering through tarnation was that as the credits rolled, i was reminded that the homecoming queen (and cousin of my best friend growing up) of my very own alma mater had a bit part in it. i had read about it somewhere, but had forgotten about it until i saw her name rolled up the black screen as pleasant indie rock played. too late though... i won't go through it again, even for the chance to confirm a by-association brush with fame.

a small boy just came up and tried to sell me gum. that happens all of the time in this cafe, but it is usually a different boy, younger and - harsh, i know - cuter. the boy tonight stayed and stared at my screen for what seemed like an eternity. i almost wanted to start reading it to him as a bedtime story, he was so transfixed. but then he was excorted out. that never happens to his younger/cuter counterpart. i found it to be kind of harsh since he wasn't bothering me. but i also wasn't going to buy gum, so maybe he was forced to move onto a more lucrative locale. speaking of gum, i went to two meetings of the pro-choice alliance after work today... at one, one of the E.D.'s who was there started passing around gum that she had brought back from a meeting in new york... there was quite a to-do over a jumbo pack of juicy fruit. and it finally registered that all kinds of gum here are called chiclets. as in "chiclets", as far as i can tell, is the word for gum. so these were juicy fruit chiclets. i can't quite wrap my mind around it.

i would like to do the weekend visit justice, and i really have to pee, so i will save those details for a later date. i got a little camera happy at times, so flickr gives the gist in pictures.

i leave three weeks from tomorrow which has my head in a bit of a spin. i cannot wait for brendan's visit at the end of next week, but the thought of all that awaits in seattle upon my return is a little overwhelming. a probable move ending in cohabitation with b, finding a job, start of classes, leaving mexico city's rainy season just in time for seattle's rainy season (if 8 months counts as a season). at the very least, seattle's endless thai food options and meals without a tortilla anywhere in sight promise to help me readjust in comfort.

richter scale

i have been in the on-again, off-again habit of stopping at the little coffee stand by my house on my way to work to caffeinate with a hot, cinnamon-y mocha. my pathetically weak tolerance for caffeine has not changed even with this habit, so it reliably has me flying high by 10am. sometimes i have trouble falling asleep at night when i have one, so recently i have laid off a bit, but treated myself this morning... it's friday, afterall. and my to do list at work has diminished substantially so i thought a little caffeine buzz might keep my mind and nerves occupied.

i got in this morning and was sipping and surfing, checking in on friday's news on the washington post, the seattle times, and la jornada. just as i was catching up on the intricacies of the latest airplane ban on shampoo/toothpaste/bottled water, and the semi-encouraging results of the presidential vote recount thus far, i started to feel a little funny, and was worried that the mocha was having even more of an effect than i bargained for.

on a freaky occaision a few months ago in seattle, i woke up in the middle of the night, went to the bathroom, and promptly passed out. corinne, my dear roommate, came to my rescue just after i came to, when i promptly konked out again. at some point bleary-eyed brendan joined in the fun, got me some juice and a cold washcloth, and i slowly started to feel better. i went to the clinic at school the following week, and after a medical exam that seemed to only skim the surface of possible causes, the doctor assured me that there were no signs of anything serious. ever since then i have been a little nervous that it could happen again. (i guess i will mention that the fainting spell followed a night of several drinks, and very little dinner, but doesn't that take away from the intrigue of it all?)

so when i started to feel a little light-headed this morning, and then started to sense that i was swaying back and forth, the doctor's advice from several months ago came flooding back. i put my head between my knees and hoped for the best. when i sat back up, i felt okay... mostly i was not lying disoriented on the floor, which was the outcome i was hoping most to avoid. i shook it off and vowed to drink a lot of water to try to dilute some of the stimulant that threw me for a loop and would continue to course through my veins for the better part of the rest of the day.

jennifer got into the office soon after, and when she came back upstairs from making her daily cup of tea, she cast some light on the whole situation... the punchline...

it was an earthquake!

the woman who cleans the office, señora mica, asked jennifer if she had felt it - that it had happened about half an hour ago or so - and though jennifer didn't notice it, it certainly helped to explain my extraterrestrial caffeine trip. if i was going to be in mexico city for an earthquake, i'm sure glad it was the type that makes everything in my line of vision sway side-to-side for a few moments, and not of the variety that would make the hefty binders above my desk fall on my head.

and i guess i can keep drinking my beloved mochas. i get a kick out the jitters, and when you factor in shifting tectonic plates, the illusion of low-level hallucinations adds some excitement to my day too.

changes are afoot.

so, i have started to feel a bit like i have been left to my own devices in this scary place called cyber-space. my optimistic and ever-supportive S.O. has suggested, however, that my strict policy for those who can comment on my blog may be contributing to the recent dearth in feedback and my resulting abandonment complex. i have decided to put his theory, and my own cynicism, to the test.

comments are open once again. i reserve the right to censor anything vaguely to blantantly offensive posted by people i don't know.

so, please, comment away.

oh, and i finally caved and upgraded my flickr account, so check out all that is new and far too organized over that way.

tent city, mexican style

those from seattle are very familiar with the heated, ongoing debate that seems to follow the tent city program wherever it goes in our lush, drippy region. residents from any community where the temporary encampment for homeless people has plans to set up shop are consistently up in arms about what a tent city in their community will mean for its image, its crime rates, the safety of its children, among a myriad of other - generally unfounded - concerns. these reactions often get a lot of media play time in and around in seattle, and each time plans for tent city moving to a new area are announced, it begins to seem that we are watching the news on replay.

when politically-motivated tent cities are constructed around the mexican capital, in an effort to cripple the city and the national economy, such media attention - at least internationally - is not as readily available. we are heading into Day 5 of the efforts of lopez obrador and his most committed supporters to get the federal electoral institute to grant the vote-by-vote recount they are demanding. they have set up huge tent cities along one of mexico city's major east-west arteries, and have also taken over most of the historic center, which is the heart of the tourist industry in this bustling metropolis. what surprises me more than the lack of media attention to this dramatically large-scale display of civil disobedience is the fact that no one with the power to stop it appears to be prepared to do so. vicente fox has said they he will only step in to do something about it if requested by the mexico city government. the mayor of mexico city - who took over when lopez obrador had to step down to run for president - is of the same party as lopez obrador - the PRD - and is thus supportive of the effort, and recognizes that his ally's supporters aren't doing anything illegal. it is starting to seem like a distinct possibility that the demonstrations might actually continue until the IFE's september 6th deadline to make their decision - either to grant the vote-by-vote recount, or to declare calderón the president-elect. it's amazing to me really. a country where peaceful demonstrations, that cause no physical harm but do take a toll on the economy and tourist industry of the country, are left to go on their merry way, with no intervention from the federal government. such a foreign - and refreshing - idea.

i got a bird's eye view of the whole ordeal since my parents' hotel was in the historic center. i would emerge from the metro station closest to their hotel to find myself among the demonstrators and their temporary homes on the city's main square, the zócalo. finding my way through to where i could exit to the get myself in the general direction of the hotel was disorienting and overwhelming. i have never seen anything like it, and i probably never will again. and what a week for my family to visit - on top of the constant hyper-stimulation of simply experiencing the city, they got a little taste of political history in the making to boot.

our visit was jam-packed, mostly thanks to the fact that my sister had an ambitious agenda for her stay here, and that when she is on vacation, any need she might normally have for rest and/or recuperation apparently vanishes. in semi-chonicological order, the visit with my family included: a trip to the top of the torre latinoamericana in downtown mexico city - we were lucky enough to get a clear, smog- and rain-free evening and the view of the city and its immensity was unbelievable; lunch and the frida kahlo museum (for them, work for me) in coyoacán; a visit with the cousin of my mom's friend in coyoacán; a day trip on one of mexico's cushy first-class buslines to puebla; a visit to the world-reknowned museum of anthropology in chapultapec park; a night out on the town for my sister and myself that included beers and a little dancing at the mariachi-packed plaza garibaldi and booty shaking at mama rumba in san ángel; a day trip to the basilica of guadalupe, which is a huge deal if you're latino/a and catholic, and then onto the ancient city of teotihuacan; a sunday evening performance of the ballet folklorico in the fine arts palace; some time apart followed by a birthday dinner for my sister's 31st on the patio of a fancy restaurant near my parents' hotel; breakfast at the original sanborn's in the casa azuelejos and then a visit to diego's murals at the secretary of education building. we then saw my sister off, and my parents and i had a late evening dinner at the hotel magestic, overlooking the zócalo and its endless sea of white tents.

as we wrapped up our week of non-stop activity, we took in the scene far below us. and we couldn't help thinking about how such a demonstration would go - or more likely, not go, given the powers that be - in our own country. we were left to soak up the emphatic display of political fervor - along with our last round of tacos and beer, and even chocolate cake, as our little family unit in mexico city - and realize that we would likely never see anything like it again.