Fuertes, Murales y Comida

16 de enero

January 16, my friends and I went to los Fuertes de Loreto y Guadalupe, two forts that were essential in the battle of Cinco de Mayo in the revolution against french occupation. They were constructed in the 18th century, and are absolutely beautiful.

Entrance to Fort Loreto

The fort featured a museum with lots of war relics such as flags, uniforms, guns, binoculars and the like. It was super cool to see so many artifacts that were in relatively good condition and to learn a bit about Mexico's history as we wandered through. We went with a couple friends who are also on exchange in Puebla, but hail from one of the northern states. They were able to give us a bit more background information about the wars and such.

Panorama of the fort ft. Sydney

Beautiful mural representing the revolution

The mural above is one of my favorites I've seen. The colors are vivid, and its done in the style of traditional Mexican muralists. 

Food of the Week:

Lentil soup with tocino (bacon) and platanos fritos (fried bananas, which just so happen to be one of my favorite foods ever).

It might not look like much, but this is probably one of the best foods I've eaten so far here in Puebla. I didn't think I even liked lentil soup, but I ate two bowls of this stuff and would have eaten more if I didn't want to save room for the main course. 

It's been a really amazing few weeks food wise. I'm eating healthier foods in large portions, so my snacking habit has all but disappeared. I've been having a hard time battling my salted, fatty food cravings. When I get desperate, I satisfy it with these freshly made potato chips with lime juice and salt that are deliciously deadly. 

Overall though, I've felt a lot healthier since I've been here. My host mother appears mildly offended that I've actually been loosing weight. I need to explain that it's not because I'm not eating enough, but that I'm actually eating well.

Brujas, Cloaks and Classes

19 de enero

Today I learned that some of the churches here in Puebla don't keep holy water in their entry because the local brujas [witches] kept putting potions in it.

I guess it's the optomist in me, but I keep imagining kind little old ladies sauntering up to the holy water and dumping in a potion to encourage compassion and forgiveness because she thinks the world needs more.

In other news, yesterday I bought a chal [shawl] that kind of looks like a cloak. I wore it to class today and at least three friends told me that I look like I belong in Hogwarts. I feel so epic swooshing around in it and it makes me very happy. 

I'm also probably going to sign up for a painting class, even if it is a little nerve wracking and not necessarily in my traditional branch of skills. I originally wanted to do ceramics, but a whole bunch of my classmates are taking it and I don't want to be tempted to gravitate towards only them. I want to make new friends, dammit!

Right now I'm resting my becloaked self in an attempt to recharge my introverted energies. I think this is some of my only free time in a while, and I've felt like I've been running on empty for the last couple of days. It's hard to get alone time when one of the major rules is "Don't go anywhere alone, ever!"

Semana Primera

3 a 15 de enero

La semana primera en Puebla estaba muy divertido, y me encanta la ciudad y mi familia.

The first week in Puebla was very fun and I love the city and my family.

My family is very loving and kind towards me, mi mamá is an amazing cook. (left: chicken with onions, spinach and nutmeg. right: chilaquiles)

        

Our host sister has two little ones: a five year old boy and an 18 month old girl. Both are very sweet. I keep making faces at the little girl hoping for a smile and a laugh, (finally on Wednesday I achieved the former). The little boy always wants to play, but he's really only here right in the middle of prime nap and homework time.

One of the first days we were here, he wanted to hang out with us in our room, but Syd and I said we needed to rest and change. Knowing he'd be persistent, we closed and locked the door. This is where it gets good: he kept trying to turn the handle, we kept responding "¡no puebes entrar!" (you can't come in!). There was a moment of quiet, and we thought he finally understood. Nope. The little monster punched the door open. While I was in the middle of changing.

Well, now he knows that if the door is closed, he can't come in. Lesson learned the hard way I guess.

Our house is super cute too. There's no central heating, which was really only a problem the last few days when it felt like Seattle had followed us south. It was cold, rainy and windy, and I deeply regretted only packing one sweater. Our shower is a pipe that sprouts out of the wall, and we try to collect the water in a bucket to reuse it to water plants and stuff. It's actually a pretty nice use of recycling, even if it did take a little getting used too.

This is our room on our first day. It's pretty much the same, except syd's clothes are actually here now and the table has turned into a depository/makeup table. Out the window is a view of a super cute backyard where geckos like to climb on the walls (I definitely have tried to catch some a couple of times). Over the back wall is a river, and sometimes if the wind is just right you can catch a lovely wiff of I don't know what. The walk to school crosses it, and if you look down there's a bunch of white foam and it's recommended that you try to avoid breathing because it smells pretty terrible. There's lot's of pretty trees around it though, so at least it looks pretty.

We went out to some bars last Friday, and the first one had the most amazing piña coladas and a live band that performed classic rock. It was amazing. We bar hopped around a bit after that, but the night sort of fell after that. 

Saturday we went to a discotec and danced the night away. I lost track of time and before I knew it, it was 3am and Syd was like "okay, it's time to go home." It just felt so good to dance, and I felt so present in my body it was amazing. I got a few guys' numbers, and have been talking with one pretty consistently since then. We keep explaining different colloquial phrases and laughing at each other's confusion. He speaks almost solely Spanish, which is really amazing for my practice, but he can communicate well enough in English that if I say "wait, I really have no idea what you're saying"  he can help me out.

Two pretty negative things happened in the last week though.

On Friday, on their way to meet us at the Zocalo, two of my classmates were on a bus and got robbed at gunpoint. One of them lost everything they had, and the other somehow managed to only give up his money. Beyond being scared and freaked out, no one on the bus was hurt. I want to emphasize that point, no. one. was. hurt.

It's served as a good lesson to us though: don't bus at night, remember to only carry the absolute essentials, and make sure you have people knowing where you are, where you're going, and who you are helping to keep track of you. Also, if we're in public we need to speak only spanish, because our american english sticks out like a sore thumb. 

I still feel very safe here, I'm just even more alert than I was before.

The other negative thing was a loss in my family. As some of you know (because I excitedly texted you in all caps) my family had a Yorkie puppy named Pinchi. He was the most energetic, playful ball of a pup ever. 

Wednesday night, he slipped out the front door and ran into the street where he was hit by a car. Unfortunately, he didn't make it, and it was really hard to understand the rapid-fire spanish about what happened, but I did catch that his death was almost instant, so at least he didn't suffer. It threw the whole family off for the last few days, as it should. It's been hard trying to walk the thin line between wanting to support them, and not trying to over-help.

I've been mourning him too. Yorkies have always been one of my favorite dogs, and I love animals in general, so I was pretty attached to him from the get go. 

On the bright side, the family's laughter and smiles are starting to come back, my spanish is improving constantly (even if there's still the moments of "wait, how the HECK DO YOU SAY THIS" followed by frantically searching the divine website wordreference.com) and I'm starting to feel myself settling in.

There's still a part of me that feels like I'm on vacation, and so there's another part of me that's waiting in nervous anticipating for the other shoe too drop.

Photo of a side street near the Zocalo, el centro del Puebla

P.S. I have now been lost 3 times in Puebla.

1. Syd and I took the bus home without knowing that they dropped us off on another street and ended up outside of Puebla. We were on the bus for about an hour and a half, and just sort of rode around until we saw something familiar.
2. First time walking to la Ibero (our university), we made a slightly wrong term cause google maps mislead us and we ended up walking for over an hour instead of the promised 40 minutes. Now that we know what we're doing, though, the walk is actually nice and I'm going to try to take it as many mornings as possible.
3. Today, me and 8 other of my classmates (just under half the class) took the wrong bus to school. Before we got on, we asked if it went to la ibero, and the driver said yes. After about 20 minutes he told us that we were at our stop, we hopped off, only to find we were over 30 minutes walking distance from the Ibero. Then we tried to take a shortcut and that backfired. We all lived, but it was an adventure.

Cacaxtla & la ciudad de México

26 de diciembre a 2 de Enero

I spent my second week in Mexico staying with an amazing family in the neighborhood where Diegro Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived. The mother, Yvonne, graduated high school with my mom and was kind enough to host me for the week. I had such an amazing time.

The two older boys, 14 and 8, were very sweet, and we went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters together (viewing #3). We discussed nerd culture, language, the city, everything. Unfortunately, it was most;y in English so my Spanish really didn't improve much that week. 

There were also two younger children, a 5 1/2 year old boy and a 2 year old girl (both spoke better Spanish than me). 

My second day there they took me to see Cacaxtla, one of the largest archaeological sites in México. It's believed to be a city built by the Olmecas-Xicallanca people (I will abbreviate to Olmecs).

It was absolutely amazing. The site is outside the ring of mountains surrounding la Ciudad de México, but the volcano in this picture (which constantly experiences minor eruptions that mostly consist of puffs of smoke/vapor/ash) is visible from both the city and Cacaxtla.

I was absolutely blown away by the pristine colors, and the visibility. You can see the pollution that's everywhere here and sinks down between buildings to settle close to the ground. It was so warm though. I don't think I've been cold since I got here. #blessed

The view here is from atop the largest uncovered pyramid at the site, the pyramid you can see is a minor temple that's still in pretty good shape. If you look carefully, just across the visible path from that pyramid is a triangular-ish shaped hill with some small trees on it. Specialists suspect that it's another pyramid, but they haven't received enough money to finish excavating the whole site yet.

The view all around the main central pyramid is littered with these small suspected-pyramids (you can see 3 more in the picture above), leading scientists to believe that Cacaxtla is one of the biggest sites they've found.

This is a panorama of the large pyramid as you approach from the path. All of the different step-like layers were built during a different "era." At the end of each era, a child was selected as a sacrifice, and then their body was entombed in the walls being built for the next era. The child was selected based off of number of birthmarks or patches of differently colored hair. If you had two or more, you were a prime candidate for ringing in the new era. 

The priests who did the sacrificing lived at the top, and were the only men who didn't have to fight in the wars with other tribes.

All of the paint here is original. Nothing has been restored. Nothing. I still can't get over that. This mural is almost 100% in tact, and depicts the Olmecs conquering the Maya, which represented the earth "conquering" the rain, i.e. absorbing it. It's a mural of the necessary sacrifice of celestial water to the earth for the sake of live. The Maya are the ones in feathers (sky--> rain --> water) and the Olmecs are in the leopard skin (leopard --> land animal --> earth). 

Fun fact, the first archaeologist  was a dude who analyzed this mirror thought it was just depicting the olmecs beating the mayans in a bloody battle. It was a female archaeologist who came back and said "wait, hold up, that doesn't make sense, try this instead." Of course.

We also went to el Museo Dolores Olmedo, who was really close friends with Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. She had a personal collection of their artwork that, when she died, she donated to the city to be kept as a museum to honor their work.

As you entered the museum you were greeted by these giant agave plants. These guys were massive, to the point where you can really tell that they're straight out of the prehistoric era. Agave is everywhere, and they're right at the tale end of what I can only assume is their pollination  (do they even pollinate? I have no idea how these massive plants reproduce) season, because some of them have these giant stalks that tower over even some of the trees.

See? What even are these things. I love them. They're fascinating.

Also, just for reference, that hedge next to it? Yeah, that came up to my hip. 

The museum was also absolutely swarming with peacocks. I mean, they were everywhere. 

Look at this beautiful sleepy peacock.

They also keep a pack of a breed of dogs unique to Mexico, se llaman Xoloitzcuintle (zoh-loh-eets-kweent-lee). try saying that 5 times fast. They're simultaneously the ugliest and the cutest dogs I've ever seen. They're hairless, except some of them have a little tuft of white/grey hair on the top of their head. 

This is one laying down next to a statue in their enclosure.

I want 20 of them. They're endangered, so I'll call it a reserve and I will help to keep this hideously adorable breed of pups in existence #lifegoals