la ciudad de méxico

This weekend, we went to Mexico City. It is about a 3-hour bus trip from Taxco and it's a beautiful drive. I really wish I could have stopped and taken pictures about every few kilometers (um, actually, I have no idea how long a kilometer is... but they don't do miles here!) The most important thing I learned on this drive was to always carry a peso in your pocket. Believe it or not, at the place we stopped in Cuernavaca to use the restroom, it cost a peso for toilet paper. Guess who left all their pesos on the bus? Lesson learned. Thankfully, my friends are more responsible and were willing to share pesos.

As we were driving into the city, it was very eye-opening to see how some people live there. I wish I had pictures of some of the "houses" because it really made me stop and be thankful for what I have. Pictures wouldn't even be able to do it justice.


We left on Saturday morning and got to the city mid-morning. Our first stop was the ruins of the Temple Mayor - the engineering that went into this place is fascinating. I didn't quite understand how everything worked or what purpose everything served, but it was still very interesting to see. My pictures from this aren't that great because we were looking at, well, ruins - so I just posted this picture of us. :)


This is the Palacio Nacional - a government building. This part of our tour kind of reminded me of Washington, D.C. Mexico City is the center of government in Mexico, so there's some correlation. We also went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes and saw some art there.


My favorite thing we've done so far as a group is definitely Teotihuacan (above). This was an ancient Aztec city, pyramids, etc. That's me and Emily standing there in front of it, although really the point of the picture is to show how big this pyramid is. :) We climbed it and there's a great view from the top. The history about this place was also really interesting, but I wouldn't be able to reproduce it here because we haven't reviewed it in class yet - and I need to hear everything like this in Spanish about three times for it to make any sense.
On our way back to Taxco, we stopped at UNAM - the Universidad Nacional Autonomo de Mexico. This is the National University of Mexico and has over 300,000 students - which is quite a few. The University is essentially the only public university in the nation and is entirely government-funded. Our guide, Marco, was a student here and did not pay anything to go to school for six years. The catch is that you have to pass an entrance exam to get in, which is very difficult. This building that I took a picture of has a mural on it by a former student, and the mural was actually really cool. But it's hard to tell here. The school for language-learners that I attend in Taxco is a division of UNAM.

We also stayed in a nice hotel and I got to take my first consistently-hot-and-full-water-pressure-shower in several weeks! Also, random note of interest about the hotel room - you had to have your room key card in this little slot in order for the lights to work. We had neat hotel rooms on the corner, though, so we could see two streets (filled with lots of taxis, police officers, and people walking around in the rain with ponchos and umbrellas).

Mexico City as a whole is a very fascinating place that I would probably never travel to again by choice. It was good to experience it once, but it's very loud, very dirty, and five times the size of Chicago, which makes it very overwhelming and a little scary. As in any big city, you see poverty and business both, but I have never seen such a combination of the two as Mexico City. It's impossible to explain.

The weekend went very well and I felt all of your prayers. Sunday was very different without the opportunity to go to church... I cannot wait until next weekend when Emily and I are traveling to Morelia!

Today I decided to walk home from school instead of taking the combi and I found all kinds of neat shops and things, so that was fun. It's hard to believe that I have exactly one month left here. I have so much to learn... but I cannot wait to go home. :)