Viaje a Oaxaca!

  Hello all, how are things? It's been a while since I've posted anything, but it's because the time has been quite busy here! Since I last posted, my travels have taken me to Puerto Escondido, an amazing little beach and surfing town in the south of México, highly recommendable as a vacation spot. In a "combi", or church-van style vehicle, we were 15 that fit inside: Marcelo and Livia from Brazil, Jenni and Kathi from Germany, Tim from Switzerland, Abby from Canada, our good friend Paco Alpizar, his wife and 3 kids, a friend of his kids (Mami), the driver, his wife and I (Check out the picture to the left). We stayed in some cabins about 20 steps from Playa Zicatela, one of the most famous beaches in the world for surfing, and even tried a little surfing, mostly failing miserably but every once in a while managing to stand up. Quite an ambitious start though, not many folks are able to learn in such an amazing place.

 

  On the way there, we stopped in a place that is really sacred here in México, Juquila. It's very common to see trucks and bumper stickers that say "Regalo de Juquila", or "Gift of Juquila", and I had always wondered what it meant. It turns out that Juquila is a little town hidden in the endless green hills of Oaxaca (The biggest state in México, if you ironed it), where the second-most famous virgin in México, after the Virgin de Guadalupe, and it's very common to ask for things from her, which works like this: One makes a pilgrimage to the town, asks for something, and if the prayer is answered, the person is required to return every year for seven years to pay thanks to the Virgin. For example, our friend Paco asked for a son 5 years ago, and returns every year with him to the site. The same goes for the trucks, the people who drive them have asked for work, recieved it, and in tribute put it on their windshield. Pretty cool tradition. Also, as you can see in the above photo, people leave physical manifestation of their thanks too. That entire hillside is covered in little crosses, clay cars, clay children, clay houses, and any other thing that the Virgin has given to the people through prayer. Also found were various signs commemorating various pilgrimages, almost always done on foot, from places that need a week or more to arrive. The shrine was impressive, and the strength of the faith of the Mexican people never ceases to amaze.

  Here are some lovely photos from the trip!

In the market of Oaxaca, the capital of the state        My buddy Marcelo with the surfboard

My buddy Livia in Puerto Angelito, a little bay in Puerto Escondido                                      

The shrine to the Virgen of Juquila, where the requests are made

My house!

  Here is my new house, with the family Ortíz García. I live with my two parents, Rafael and Angelica, and two brothers, Octavio and Rafa, who have also done exchanges, to South Korea and Germany, respectively. It's a nice house in Santiago Momoxpan, a pueblo (small town) part of the municipality of San Pedro Cholula. Check out some of the links if you can, it's a reall cool place, and come visit! Here is a map of the entrance of the fraccionamiento (gated community, but without the snobbish connotations that they have in the US) where my house is! Take a virtual tour if you can.

Ver mapa más grande

Family Stuff

  Hello folks, how are things?

  My new family , los Ortiz García, decided to take a family day trip of sorts last weekend to Taxco de Alarcón, a gorgeous, beautiful, charming, amazing little town in the mountains of the state of Guerrero. I had heard that it was beautiful, and expressed an interest in going before, so I was really excited. We got up nice and early, got all the water bottles in the cooler, all the little snacks in the back seat and vámonos! Passing Cuautla and later Cuernavaca, we made good time cutting through the oppressive heat. Due to its elevation, Puebla usually stays pretty cool, but in states like Morelos and Guerrero, even in closeby cities such as Atlixco, it's noticeably warmer and more humid. This was did not help the fact that we were all tired and wanted to take some nappies.

 Driving through these places, I can't help but be amazed again at how lucky I am to be able to take a family road trip to such cool towns, and share it with a family. Lovely stuff. Getting closer to Taxco, the terrain gets really hilly, and without sounding condescending, Mexican driving etiquette doesn't tend towards staying in your lane and driving at a reasonable velocity. It comes with the experience, no? That made the experience all the more interesting, as my host dad either sped past or was sped passed by other cars on mountain highways with no guardrails. The closest experience that I had ever had was driving through West Virginia, and it's definitely comparable. Taxco is also part of the Méxican Secretary of Tourism's "pueblos mágicos", or magic towns, signifying that they form a part of the pueblo culture that is such a neat part of México. This program gives the towns funding to clean them up, superficially, like cleaning up the streets and painting builidings, to more intensive project like burying wires instead or them hanging around.

  After about 4 hours of driving, we turned a curve and there it was! Taxco is gorgeous and amazing at first sight, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was at first. These pictures were taken from the balcony of a jewelry stire building, which will sound strange until I get to my next point. Taxco is all about silver, but not like anything you've seen before. When we were first driving through the main streets, which as you can see to the left, are about five people wide and always clogged (part of the charm, trust me), my dad said "Cullen, I want you to look at these stores and tell me what they are selling. In all seriousness, I would say that 8 of every 10, or 4 of every 5, sold silver. Silver is the main industry in Taxco, but by a long shot. The silver industry had always been around in Taxco, with the huge mines that are found there, but didn't really take off as a finishing industry until William Spratling of Sonyea, NY, settled down there and opened up a sort of apprenticeship with an experienced goldsmith from a nearby city. This humble injection of capital turned Taxco into the silver capital of México that it is today. Unbelievable, the place. You can see the tianguis (tent markets) behind my host brother, Rafa. Now tianguis are usually temporary things where bootleg clothing and things like that. However, these ones are all silver. A tent market where silver is sold. How awesome is that!

  So, my host brother and I grabbed some breakfast, pozole with pollo adobado and a kilo of tortillas, deliciousness, and then got to exploring the city.

Other Happenings at the Carnaval of San Pedro Cholula

  My friend just showed me this video of the Carnaval that I went to and put videos up from, and I feel incredibly lucky. Obviously we felt a sense of danger, but ignored it for the sake of having a good time at the Carnaval, but there was definitely evidence of possible not-so-nice results. Seeing this was really humbling, because we were pretty close to some rifles too, and it definitely could have happened to any of us.
  So, not to depress everyone, but this just goes to show how lucky we are!

  This 20 year old guy wandered a lottle too close to the rifles, and ended up dying, unfortunately.

Moving Day

Moving Day

21 March 2011

Ruta Maya!!

    Here are some photos from the Ruta Maya, which we will be traveling this April and May, I hope that you folk are as excited as I am. The Ruta Maya is a travel route prepared by the Mexican Secretary of Communications and Transport as part of the bicentennial celebrations in 2010.
    2010, being the 200th anniversary of the Mexican Independence and the 100th of the Mexican Revolution, the government has put a ton of new tourist activities around the country For example,  some really cool signs saying "Quieres saber qué pasó aquí?" (Do you want to know what happened here?) that provide a number that, if one sends a text message to it, will reply with information about the site. A really interesting idea, seen here in a photo from El señor del hospital.
    Another example are road signs that point out interesting sites that are either historically or culturally significant. They are pretty interesting too, though one would need to be pretty bored to drve around follwing them. Well, I would if I had a car and a buddy, but I'm strange.


   Anyway, what I was saying before. There are various Rutas, like the Ruta de la Independencia that we went through in November and December, la Ruta del Tequila, la Ruta de la Revolución, etc. Basically, the idea is to follow the path of a certain event in Mexican History, a passively guided your established by the government. I think it's an awesome idea. So, here are some pictures of places that we will visit on the way.

   Here is where we'll be the second day of the trip, after the first really heavy day of travel to get to the southern part of México, specifically Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas. This state is known for it's jungles and isolation, I'm really excited to check it out. This photo is from el Cañón del Sumidero, or the Sink Canyon, where we will be the second day ---------->>>>>




    The third day, we'll wander around Tapachula, another city in Chiapas, and later go to a water park type deal.


   

    Later, we will head down to Guatemala to the District Conference, with all the exchange students from all over México, it should be awesome. We'll also get to explore in Antigua Guatemala, and stay there for three dys until we head back to Tapachula.

   From Tapachula, we'll wander around the Yucatán Peninsula for awhile, visiting Agua Azul, a beautiful natural park. From there, it's the route to Palenque, which I'm sure will be my favorite part.

  Palenque was a huge Maya city in the jungle of Chiapas that flourished in from 100 BC to about 800 AD, one of the most important ceremonial, trade, and government centers of the Mayan Empire. I love the Mayas, and I'll tell you why. One of the most important things in life is knowing the area that you're in, and these guys took it to extremes. They not only predicted floods, harvested and planted according to the seasons, created two calendars that are more accurate than the Gregorian one that we use, used an advanced writing system, and made considerable contributions to architecture, city planning, mathematics, and many other fields, they also studied and created the most developed body of astronomical knowledge of their time. The Mayas were one of the longest-lasting civizilations of Mesoamerica, and only had one big collapse in the middle of two periods of greatness. This brings me to Palenque, which was a city known mostly for it's ceremonial centers, especially the ball courts that were used to decide who would be sacrificed, in which the winners were deemed the most worthy to be sacrificed to the gods. It is said that only about 10 percent of Palenque is open and excavated, with the other 90 being hidden, swallowed up by the jungle. Sounds intriguing, right? Maybe I'll stray off the trail to help them out.

   Later, we'll head to Uxmal, another abandoned Maya city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mérida. It's pronounced OOSH-mal, and it's known for being the bext-preserved Maya site around, thanks to being built better than any other site. The city was a goverment center, as well as one of the more important archaeoastronomical sites, that being a place that served an astronomical purpose while functioning as a city too. To the left is the Pyramid of the Magician, which has been added on to 5 times, according to the pyramid-building tradition of building a new one to celebrate a cycle of time, a new leader, or another significant event. According to legend, a magician needed only one night to build it, hence the name. However, that's just a silly legend, obviously not.

    Some other sites that we will spend time with amazing people in:

        Chichén Itzá, another Maya city and UNESCO Site, in the state of Yucatán. This was one of the most important city in all the Maya civilization, if not hte most important in terms of general activity. To the left is "El Castillo", of The Castle, on of the larger pyramids in Mesoamerica and certainly impressive. Again, after much excavation, a couple of previously unknown rooms and tunnels, including a throne room inside the pyramid! Unfortunately, some other tourists are wussies and the site was closed to climbing and physical appreciation in 2006. I would recommend checking out this photo, it's in high resolution and you can really see the details of the structure.

  One of the most noted stops on the trip is obviously Cancún, in the state of Quintana Roo. Cancún is obviously a huge tourist and beach place, but it too has Mayan whatnot around there. However, we all know what the objective of a visit there is: hang out on the beach and get tan. It will definitely be crazy, but don't worry Mom, I'll be the voice of reason. However, the experience should be unreal. Fortunately, the gringo spring break crowd and their self-glorifying drunkenness will be hard at work studying while we're partying.

    The next stop on the unabashedly beach bum section of the trip is Playa del Carmen, just south of Cancún. Not really too much to say about this one, other than that it's an incredibly beautiful place with some of the best beaches in the world.

    After Playa del Carmen, we'll head over to Villahermosa, the capital of the state of Tabasco, with a whole bunch of interesting whatnot, including La Venta, which I'm really excited about. La Venta was an Olmec city, the Olmecs being the "mother culture" of all the significant Mesoamerican ones, those who started the cult of Quetzalcoatl and jaguar worship. They are well-known for the colossal heads of more than 2 meters with seemingly African features, which has lead to specualtion as to their origin. The Olmec ran the show from about 1500 BC to 100 AD, laying the foundation for the civilizations that would follow.




So, that's the pre-summary of the trip, be ready for the photos whenI get back! We'll be leaving the 26th of April and getting back the 12th of May, just in time for my birthday. I'm incredibly excited, for the places but more so to spend time with some of my favorite people in the world, and that's a serious statement.

More YouTube Culture

    Here is one of my personal favorite Mexican YouTube favorites, even though it's a little embarrassing and awkward. It's called "Las Aventuras del Trapo", or "The Adventures of the Washcloth". For some reason, an interview team from Televisa, a big Mexican TV network, decides to interview a poor guy in a mental hospital.

A rough translation: We're here, and they're committing a lot of injustices, and the take away the washcloth, and they don't put it! Why do they take it away if it's something that must be there? He always meddles and meddles and meddles! Remember, they took a lot of my blood, and now they want to give them problems again!...They turned me over, and did a lot of things with me! They should give me some protection, a solution, because that time, the bread wins, and here it is!

Q: You don't go to the doctor, you don't like the doctor?

A: Eat the bread, eat the bread, eat the bread, eat it, eat it, eat it x20

Q: I have gum

A; No, no no, you have to grab the bread!

Q: OK, I will in a second

A: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHH UHHHHHH AHAHHAHHHH AHAHAHHAHH

A: We're here, in that which is México, México, México, and we give an applause to those who come and-you need to eat the bread. Eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it.

Q: Alrighty, I'll eat it

A: Ahhhh! It's tasty, right? Right on, so you know that it's the bread, that which is good! Even you eat bread! Crazy, right?

Q: Yeah, it's good bread

A: Yeah, sure. Put the washcloth on! That one over there! The one that was over there! Obviously, there it is man, look, there it is!

Q: Yeah, I'll look for it in a second, hold on

A: Look for it! Come on, look for it! The washcloth! The washcloth, the washcloth the washcloth

Enjoy folks

Carnaval de San Pedro Cholula

   I've become a big fan of Carnavales, and here is another installment in the Adventures of Questionable Safety series.

     This Carnaval was in San Pedro Cholula, a town right near my house. As you can see, there are the "huey-hueys", or guys who dress up like Turks, French, Arabs, Spanish, Hungarians, etc. and fire huge antique rifles every 2 minutes. It's completely different than the Carnavales in Rio de Janeiro or in France, more casual and party-oriented affairs, with strong undercurrents of debauchery; this Carnaval always has a slight implication of danger and craziness, along with the usual wild partying. So, with my two faithful traveling companions, Lourenço Ledo and Marcelo Carneiro of Brasil, I headed on down at about 12 to see what the deal was.

    When we arrived, it was pretty tranquil, so we walked around and drank some tasty micheladas, wandered through the folks and bought some knick-knacks. We stayed at one booth for a while solving metal visual puzzles, called "rompecabezas de alambre", translated literally as "wire things that break your head", which, apart from having an incredibly accurate name, will definitely take up space in my suitcase on the way home. Marcelo is pretty good at them, but they are still quite tough to get. The idea is that you have to separate two or three parts from each other. Look up alambrijes on YouTube to get an idea. I tried explaining to him that I had gotten a high score on the SAT, that I get good grades, but it's a classic example of test- and school-based knowledge meaning nothing in situations of problem-solving and imagination.

   After that, the parade started. The huey-hueys dancing and shooting, the marching bands making a huge noise, women dancing and carrying signs, basically an group decision to make as much mess, noise, and craziness as possible. A great idea, according to me. The parade was announced by the ever-present sounds of rifles, and we got right into the action, sometimes dancing with the guys, dancing on the curb, inviting the girls to dance with us, in general making a scene, a talent which I have always developed and treasured.

As you can see in the videos, the rifles sometimes get a little too close, and 

getting too involved in the action is a real occurrence!

ENJOY, and leave comments or send questions to

handlazfan@gmail.com

Carnaval de Huejotzingo!

HELLO EVERYBODY!

    Yesterday was a wonderful day, the day of Carnaval! Fat Tuesday is the day when Carnaval celebrations all over the world happen, from Mardi Gras in New Orleans to the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil to the Carnaval in Dunkerque France. Gotta get all that celebrating out of the system before Lent!

A good friend of mine had told me about the Carnaval in Huejotzingo, and that it was one of the coolest things he's ever seen in his life. One of his friends had participated in the madness before, and he recommended it too. The Carnaval de Huejotzingo is famous for the "huey-hueys", costumed weirdos who dance around with huge rifles. There is a formal parade, but they wander around the streets in little groups too. They told me that it was definitely worth going, even though with the (thankfully unloaded) rifles it gets a little scary. Still,. I was undeterred! According to some statistics, there are 12 thousand dancers, 15 thousand visitors, and an average of 80 people injured per year. The doctors have told me that my finger can be reattached soon.

Here's an official video, where you can see the masks and madness

(No fights like the one you see at the end happened this year, I didn't even see any violence)

So, I got a couple buddies together, and at approximately 1015 AM EST (915 here), we hopped on a bus that said HUEJOTZINGO and vamonos! We were on our way. We were 6, my friends Alison (USA), Kerrigan Boyd (USA), Tulia Savulov (Romania), Kristina (Germany) and Anni Koponen (Finland). We got off the bus and immediately started to wander around and stick our noses in strange places. A nice guy came over and told us that some of the places, although interesting, were not worth exploring, so we headed over to the more open and public part of the town.

   In the zócalo, or main square of the town, we encountered huge markets, tents made of tarpaulin with huge piles of ice covering beer, cups, enormous grills next to huge hunks of meat, tequila, quesadillas, cemitas, chilaquiles, tacos, burros, sopas, gorditas, and everything else you could ever want. I settled for a quesadilla of mushrooms with mozarrella and salsa to go with my tequila and Squirt. Good choice.

Later we headed out to watch the parade, where the aforementioned thousands were marching around, firing the rifles, dancing, and generally making a lot of noise. At one point, Anni and I wandered a bit too close to a guy who fired, quite a bad decision. I felt the impact of the gun, and couldn't hear for a few seconds, but she started swearing in Finnish and yelling that she couldn't hear, then later started to cry. Poor girl, but this is the way things go when one explores the weirdness that is rural México.

This is a video I took right next to the parade, I hope it becomes famous!

After a while it became apparent that the situation would only get worse as the day went on, owing to the alcohol and heat, so we got on the road at about 2 PM towards the familiarity of Puebla.

What a lovely and interesting day

Check out some photos!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080996&id=1354980287&l=1165039d88

Expediciones Culturales!

This post will be pretty light weight, with mostly photos.

In my infinite restlessness, I've been organizing a bunch of day trips and stuff like that to various strange and obscure places in México, called "Expediciones Culturales!" (with a mandatory exclamation point). Basically, I put the call out to travel to a place for the day, we meet up in a place, and then take the bus to a previously unknown place! The first one was to the Pyramid of Cholula, and the most recent one was to TONANTZINTLA, a small pueblo on the outskirts of Puebla.

It's known for it's church...

The church is pretty much unique in México, because it is one of the very few NOT designed by Spanish artisans. The Spanish conquistadores, for some reason that I'm not sure of, put the indios of this pueblo in charge of building this church.

So, instead of building the traditional heaven over the altar scheme, the indios were told to build what THEY thought heaven/paradise was like. It turned out like this. We were not allowed to take photos inside, so I'll have to use some others:

If you notice, it's not all about angels and stuff like that, even though it looks like it at first glance. Instead of angels and God, the indios put little children, according to their belief that the afterworld consisted of being reborn as a little kid; life's most innocent age.

This was about half of the group.

Later we headed over to San Francisco Acatepec, another pueblo pretty close to Tonantzintla. I don't have so much history about this one, but the architecture speaks for itself...

          Beautiful inside, beautiful outside.

We were lucky enough to happen upon a wedding, complete with mariachis, bolo ties, and wedding cake. Really an amazing treat.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!!!

What the deal is.

Hello everyone, I hope you're all just dandy.

I'd just like to give a little update to what I've been doing lately, and some of the changes in my life obviously. Maintaining a blog is tough to do, because you have to go out and do things and make things happen in order to have good material, that is to say, that I can't actively update this thang while exploring cool places or meeting new people, you, the readers, have to hear it through me.
Admittedly, this is a hard task and , also admittedly, I haven't been doing it very well! Oh well.

At the beginning of the month, I went to a party for my friend's birthday, Camille from France. I arrived in bus after meeting up with my friend Lucy, and from Angelópolis, a mall, we took a bus the the Pyramid of Cholula, which is ridiculous to be saying like it was a normal thing, but that's the way things are, honestly. Don't worry, guys, I still appreciate and love looking at it.

So, we arrived at the party, and I will never get over how beautiful Mexican streets are. Picture a Wilson Farms or 711 or something like that. It has a big sign, fluoresent lights, trademarks, stuff like that. In México, with the exception of OXXO stores and other ones like it, the convinience stores family-owned, relatively unconnected affairs, with awesome names like Miscelania Juquilita or Abarrotes Cristo.

 Miscelania translates pretty well, but abarrotes doesn't. If you'll look at the definition, it comes from the word "to pack", which I take to mean that they are considered the things that one packs. Abarrotes are gum, pop, chips, cigarrettes, but other more local things like tamarind candy, chicharrón (pork skin), and all my favorite brands of Mexican beer (Click here for a bunch of examples).

So, to get back to my original point, these abarrote stores are magnificently decorated, with hand-painted signs, usually dedicated to some saint, person, or idea. So fun to explore in these little places, in a lot of them, if you move too much, you'll knock some stuff over! Imagine the little old ladies who sell newspapers in NYC, the ones that you can barely see, and you get the idea. So much more personal, and a lot more efficient in terms of space!



I'm a sucker for these family businesses, quite honestly.




I recently chatted with the guy who runs one near my house, a store with pretty much anything you could imagine (except deodorant, apparently), but the size of an American living room.



Another interesting thing about these stores is that seemingly without problem, it's common to see 2 or 3 open and running on the same block.

Sorry that this isn't my picture, but it gives you the idea:

Credit to pbase.com

So, just sharing some thoughts on the things that I hope will always stay interesting and weird! Come to México, it is a beautiful and interesting country, full of the type of things that you always thought would be stereotypical, but end up being perfectly in place when you find them.

Much love to all!

New photos!

Easily accessible through these links:

Fun stuff I've been up to

More fun stuff

The rest of the Independence Route

Check them out folks!

What I See in México

Hello everyone! This post is pretty interactive, and will take a while to fully appreciate, so if you can set aside some time to look at everything, I would appreciate it. One of the most difficult things to maintain is a sense of wonder, and just to make sure that these places don't become too normal for me, I want to share them with you folk, who will definitely appreciate them.

Ver mapa más grande

This is my city! Click here!

Heroica Puebla de Zaragoza is the main city; I live where it says Cholula de Rivadavia. The two volcanoes to the west are Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl, and the one to the east is La Malinche, which we (almost) climbed a couple months ago.

Ver mapa más grande

Here is the first house I lived in: Click here

It was located roughly in a municipality called San Antonio Cacalotepec, the latter part meaning (in Nahuatl) "Hill of the Ravens". I'll give an explanation of the Mexican city/town naming system on my blog in a bit.

If you'll zoom out a bit, take a look at the intersection of 24 de Febrero and 24 de Febrero. The little street only has a name for the sake of having one in Google Maps, there's no sign or anything. To go anywhere, I walked from the house to that intersection, then, following the yellow 24 de Febrero, to the highway Federal Puebla-Atlixco to take a bus to the NE, and from there to more places. A great way to learn!

Ver mapa más grande

Here is the house I live in now, it's the one above the wondeful name of my street. Put your fingers on the name John F. Kennedy, and move them to the NW until you touch a house. That's mine! If you'll zoom out, you can see the street I walk to get to La Recta (here they call it Ruta Quetzalcoatl, which is OK too), which is where the buses pass.

I don't know where my third house will be, but now is the fun part! I hope you all have Flash Player installed, and that you know how to use Google Street View, because this is the more interesting part. These are some of my favorite places in México.

Ver mapa más grande

Here is El Centro of Puebla, centered around a zócalo, or center square, a fixture in every Mexican city, and any one with Spanish influence. The first thing you see is the Cathedral of Puebla, which is a really intimidating and powerful building that has a great sense of serenity in the middle of the city. Here are some looks at the inside, intricately decorated and amazing to stand in.

A little bit to the left, and you'll see the zócalo, a really neat park with huge trees and a beautiful fountain in the middle of it. Even further to the left and you'll see the portales, which can be found in pretty much any city in México. in there are some really neat restaurants and shops. I encourage you to "walk around" with the Street View camera to get a picture of how neat it is around el Centro.

Ver mapa más grande 

Here is El Parián, a really cool market downtown, where handmade pottery, clothing, tourist stuff, candy, furniture, etc., is sold. The SV function doesn't really do it justice, so i would recommend zooming out, grabbing the little orange man again, and then placing him on some of the blue dots that appear. They represent photographs of the inside of the market, really amazing.

Ver mapa más grande

This is the zócalo of San Pedro Cholula, a place where I go to relax and write, about a 20 minute bike ride from my house. As you can see, the main plaza, with the Mexican flag and portales, is accompanied by a nice shady park with huge trees. There a huge markets, or tianguis, which, apart from having a great Wikipedia article, are put up on the weekends, where anything you could ever want is sold. Check out the other side as well. As before, it's definitely worth it to zoom out and put the little man on the blue dots.

I hope you enjoy these photos, and trust me, some of mine will but uploaded soon! I hope you're all enjoying yourselves, and I send you all much love from México.

"You can't have two sets of manners!"

    One of the quotes that has confused me as long as I have lived, until very recently.

My grandmother, Jane Brown, has always told us in that grandmotherly way, that having two sets of manners is impossible. Of course, as with most quotes and advice from grandparents, they sort of sit around in your brain, not making much sense, until the time when they would have come in handy to have thought of has passed. I'm still in awe of the wisdom of this one.

We always understood it in the strictly manners sense; that you should eat pizza with your friends without plates at 4 in the morning the same way you should eat Christmas dinner with the entire family with the good china. Obviously, that didn't make much sense, prompting us to say "well, I have lots of sets of manners, what is that about?" The idea of coming home at night to make Ramen noodles then eat them on porcelain with the good silver and napkins doesn't fit.

I think that I have found a new, better meaning for this quote. Manners should be interpreted as the way you act, the things you talk about, the way you address people, but most importantly, your morals, beliefs and ideas. Obviously one will address a grandparent differently than a friend's little brother, but the sentiment should be the same; saying hello in a friendly way.

 More importantly, do your morals and ideas change depending on who you are talking to? Do you change your opinion slightly in order to facilitate the conversation? Are you easily convinced and influenced? if so, you're using two sets of manners.

The idea is that while many things change in terms of environment, what is the thing that you always take with you while traveling?

  Your brain, your ideas, your beliefs.

So, instead of taking it as an effort to always be proper or improper, because the situation will always change in terms of etiquette, take it as a point that we should be a little bit less flexible. The other people usually don't know much better than you what to do, so if you can be the one that is fixed in your morals, ideas and beliefs, they will be drawn to you. Be the one who doesn't have two sets of manners; the one who can adapt to the situation; not as the situation is, if not to how your experiences, manners, beliefs, etc, apply to the situation! 

If your morals are flexible to the situation, who are you?

Happy birthday Jamie!

"Butt luck will drive ya butt batty"

Gotta love confused foreigners.

This confused French dude was lucky enough to have ATCQ telling him what the deal was, I'm still figuring it out more or less solo.

Some beautiful photos from a friend

My new friend Ed Simmen recently sent me some excellent photos, taken really early in the morning by his friend.

The volcano that you see is Iztaccihuatl (The Sleeping Woman), and the moon right next to it is really powerful.

I'm sure that Niagara Falls or even Lake Erie could inspire awe, but for me, these volcanoes looming over my existence here has given me a more acute sense of the power of the Earth; the reason that the volcanoes have legends associated with them.

The legend in it's most basic form:
Iztaccíhuatl was an Aztec princess, and Popocatépetl an Aztec warrior who fought for her father. Izta (her unofficial nickname according to me) fell in love with Popo (the actual nickname), but Popo was sent by Izta's father to fight in Oaxaca before they could get married. When he was about to leave, Popo promised Izta that they would get married, hoping to return alive from battle.

While she patiently but anxiously awaited her lover's return, Izta received the news that Popo had died in the war, and in her unbearable grief, she committed suicide and laid down for her final rest.  

When Popo returned in triumph, expecting to see his future wife, the discovery of her death prompted him to wait there and watch her, paralyzed with grief. After a while, he became rock, and now remains there, beside his would-be wife, watching her.

Of course there are tons of versions, but this one is the most popular. Other ones say that Popo is waiting for her to wake up, others that he committed suicide too, others that he is angry, and for that reason a volcano, and there are others that are completely different. Foor a really good breakdown, check this page out, it's got a nice explanation, and some good external links.




This is yet another example of context being changed; the power of perspective. I was always the one relatively unimpressed by Niagara Falls, that "it's just a bunch of water going over a cliff", until my dad started telling me all the legends and history associated with them. Even so, a person seeing them for the first time will undoubtedly be more amazed than I.

However, driving through the insanely curvy highways between México City and Puebla upon my arrival, I was utterly in shock. I had never been in mountains before, and the power of rock sticking up so far from the Earth, shaping the lives of all the people that had lived there since ancient times really moved me.

It's the exact same situation with the water/river/falls of Niagara Falls, but because it was a different sort of marvel in a different context, I was exponentially more impressed.

My family explained the legend to me, but I was probably asleep, and didn't really remember it, but the power of the nature really stuck with me.

GET OUT AND CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE!

Much love y'all, keep the peace.

YouTube Culture

All righty, as we all know, there are some cultural prerequisites if you want to be a competent teenager in the world today, and one of those prerequisites is having viewed a large amount of stuff on YouTube. Obviously, as even those from previous generations have experienced, the uncomfortable sensation of not getting a cultural reference or quote is not fun. However, the cultural pool has A. been expanded and B. become a lot less highbrow.

For those interested in catching up on American YouTube culture, i would recommend www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com, a primer on all that crazy stuff floating around the web.

In Mexico, there exists a YouTube culture too, as I was pleased to find out! Here are some basics


Here we have "La caida de Edgar", or basically, Edgar Falls. i saw this quite awhile ago, but the experience has been vastly enriched by the ability to understand the various swear words that he yells.

The important ones:
Pendejo: Dumbass, idiot, useless (It comes from the Latin word for "butthole hair")
Gato: Cat, literally, but in this sense it's more like gay
Naco: Low-class, uneducated, rude, ill-mannered, poor

This video is also funny because of the absurdly thick Norteño accents, think of how we Yankees view Texas accents.
_____________________________________________

Here is another great one



"Me amarraron como puerco", or "They Tied Me Up Like a Pig"

This guy was stopped on the street for some reason or another, and subsequently questioned by TV cameras before the cops. I don't question it, because he undoubtedly tells them things he wouldn't have told the police, and in better style too, according to me

The punchline is usually yelling La Canaca! which the man claims is an important social club to which either he or his father belongs, no one is sure. The other great line is "Soy el hijo del papa",  or "I'm the son of the father". It doesn't make any more sense in Spanish.


Enjoy the cross cultural understanding!

Quotes that made me question my uniqueness in the world

Today as I was walking down my street, an old man in a Texas Rangers cap said "buenas tardes" from his window, an act of sheer courtesy towards an American-looking male in México, or any male in México, that took me by surprise. I turned around to look for where the sound had come from, and I was asked where I was from after about a minute of casual conversation.    
When my acquaintance recived the answer of "Los Estados Unidos", he immediately looked excited, something that also struck me as unusual, until he responded by saying that he was from Galveston, Texas.
It always gives me pleasure to encounter my paisanos around here, and this guy really, as is said in Spanish, "fell on me well". I asked what his profession was, and is turned out to be a literature professor at the UDLA, a university right near my house. Immediately excited by this development, I quickly replied that I too was fascinated by literature, and that I was thrille to have stumbled across a fellow enthusiast. He told me to wait there and that he would come down to say hello.

When we met at the gate of his fraccionamiento (think a gated community, but much more common in México, and less snobby), he shook my hand and introduced himself as Ed Simmen, and offered me two books, along with his card, to borrow. Random encounters define my life.

Anyway, when I got home, I started reading the book that HE had edited called Gringos in Mexico, a collection of short stories written by American authors who's time in México inspired their subsequent works, such as Stephen Crane, John Graves, and William Cullen Bryant, among others. I had never felt more understood in my entire life. Every single one of the authors, through interview or text, put to words what I have, up until this point, been unable to.

Here are some of my favorites:

"I went to México not to seek romance or to immerse myself in learning about the country, but, mainly because it was unconnected with things and people I knew and seemed a likely place wherein to start getting my head straightened out"

"México, for deep and ancient reasons, is an especially, emphatically foreign country, one that has always rebuffed easy familiarity from outsiders except of a surface sort"

"You can't possibly write about a country that you come into as a foreigner except in a very humble way. As a foreigner, you can't possibly try to point out the specialities or peculiarites of México"

"I was temporarily demolished by amoebae, and more or less hypotized and frightened by the splendid barbarousness of the country"

"I told them frequently, for a while at the beginning anyway, how things ought to be.What they must have thought, that assured, sophisticated Mexican family, of my sophomoric observations! I blush now, remembering; but the basic values, we all found - the Biblical, human values of decency and love and behavior - are no different in Mexico City than those in Wellsville, New York"

I'm way too excited to start this book.

Pirami-Day!

Hello everyone! I hope you're doing well and enjoying your situations.

Right near my house, there is a structure that should be more famous than it is, because it is not only the largest pyramid the world, but the largest monument as well. The Great Pyramid of Cholula! Dimensions are approximately 450 x 450 meters of the square base with a height of 66 meters, rather large. In terms of the volume, it is even more impressive, measured at 4.45 million cubic meters, around 2.5 the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

Aside from it's impressive dimensions, the history of the structure is worth reading as well. Started in the 2nd century BC, the construction continued until around 1200 AD, being added to every time that a new leader came into power. The structure of the pyramid was made so that each new layer covered the old one completely, imagine those Russian dolls that hide each other.

So, for reasons unknown, the Cholultecas abandoned the site around 1300. As we all know, those crazy Spaniards started arriving around 1600, and on their way to Tenochtitlan, they stopped in the nearby city of Tlaxcala to recruit natives that wanted to help them in their conquest. The Tlaxcaltecas and Cholultecas were enemies, and also two of the few states not controlled by the Aztecs. So, seeing that they had a huge ally in Cortés, asked him to do them a favor by demolishing Cholula, and in return they would join him. Something like that. Cortes arrived in Cholula and engaged them in the infamous Matanza de Cholula. The pyramid (although still believed to be a hill) was used during this time for keeping hostages.

After most of the dust had settled and after many historical events that I am neither aware of or capable of telling, the Spanish started building the beautiful church, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies) around 1574. The Spanish had a tradition of sort of "blocking" Mesoamerican monuments and sacred sites with churches, erasure in a spiritual and physical form.

So, the entire idea of this post was to let you guys know the cool stuff that happens. About 15 people came to the event, just to see each other, explore the wonders that sometimes turn into normal, and spend time together. We walked up the pyramid to the church, wandered around and marveled, explored, took in the magnificent view from the top (I hope someday to accompany this with pictures), and in general, enjoyed ourselves. Hope you like it!