And on to Oaxaca!

Some pictures from the 7 hr bus ride from Mexico City to Oaxaca. It was a really beautiful day and the landscape is amazing..I took a 4am bus from San Juan del Rio to Mexico City and a 6:30am bus from Mexico City to Oaxaca. I was asleep for a good portion of the ride but it was beautiful when I finally woke up. The buses are really nice like Greyhounds in the USA. Although security is really tight, with patting down and baggage screening.

volcano?

First glimpse of Oaxaca city!

So I dropped off my stuff at our hotel and proceeded to get very lost in the city.  I was starving and found these quesillo (fresh Oaxaca cheese that's pretty similar to mozarella) and squash flower/flor de calabaza empanadas. I eventually found my way back to our hotel after asking a good number of people for directions. 

Casa Arnel, where we spent the first night in Oaxaca city

Sometime in the evening I finally saw my director walking down the street and went over to say hi,  pretty glad to see a familiar face. We walked over to the hotel and a group of UVM students who had flown in together on the same flight were there to greet us :) Everyone else trickled in throughout the night, some baggage lost in the process..

The second day, we drove 30 minutes outside the city to stay for four or five days at a retreat center in a  tiny town called San Lorenzo. The place was beautiful and felt like a weird vacation away from home but it was a nice way to bond with the group and get some lessons on adapting to life in Mexico. We started two of our classes, starting to think about our semester long Independent study projects and taking a class on the history and some politics of Mexico. 

One of our rooms at El Encuentro, a retreat center owned by a dream intepreter

Courtyard at El Encuentro

da pool that was filled with freezing well water

a yoga studio or something where we had classes for the first week

stairs and some big cacti

A wall with a cool stone design

Overlooking pre-hispanic  indigenous 500 BC ruins at Monte Alban

our group :) all 23 of us

a stadium for a ball sport at the ruins

An acacia tree, Oaxaca roughly means "over the acacia tree" in Nahuatl. The seed pods (the maroon things in this picture) can be eaten in a sauce or toasted

my roomie Gretchen

more funky trees that look like strange aquatic plants

After our retreat, we went back to Casa Arnel in the city where our luggage was stored and  our host parents came to pick us up just like summer camp..My "mom" Concepcion and 20 something "brother" Ruben came to pick us up in their car and a taxi to bring home all our stuff. The house is incredible, I'll take some pictures at some point. It is colonial style with an open-air courtyard in the center. I share a room with another girl on our program, Gretchen on the second floor. Corey lives on the first floor where most of the bedrooms are and the kitchen. Then there is a spiral staircase up to the roof overlooking the city. And a few other people live in the house, a girl named Jacki from Iowa here on winter term and some other people I haven't really met. Concepcion or Gloria, our 80 something year old aunt cooks breakfast at 8:15am and comida (the big meal of the day) at 2:30pm for us everyday. The food is really good and there is always way too much of it :) Luis is our dad and there is another women Maria who is often around that works in the family convenience store that is attached to the house.


Adios for now! Besos :)

Goodbye central mejico

Here are some more pre-semester pictures! (All from Mexico City D.F. and around the state of Querétaro) Sorry some are facing sideways, I couldn't figure out how to get blogger to rotate them..

La Peña Bernal (Queretaro)

a church by the Zócalo of San Juan del Rio

a partial view of the central panel of Diego Rivera's mural in the National Palace documenting his take on Mexico's history and  future

right panel of the Rivera mural in la Palacio

El Torre Latinoamericano at dawn in Mexico City

La Palacio Nacional (where the President's offices are located)

a close-up with some of Rivera's signature calla lilies

embroidery street vender (San Sebastion Bernal)

 

very Spanish-looking palacio nacional courtyard

super good stone ground chocolate soft serve

some indigenous dancers for the tourists (mexico city) 

Bellas Artes, a performance center and art/muralist gallery

Boats of Xochimilco (a world heritage site in southern mexico city).  These boats are just touristy at this point but used to be for transport pre-hispanic times for these canals used for an Aztec farming technique of floating gardens called "Chinampas"

Xochimilco canals (Mexico City)

La Plaza de Tres Culturas (100 B.C. pre-Hispanic civilization ruins, Hispanic churches, and modern skyscrapers)

in a flower market in Xochimilco

the coins are for wealth on this abundance plant for new years :)

I liked these..

foggy view from the top of los tres gordos, three hills each with a large cross on top(San Juan del Rio)

Adorable dog that befriended us while we were waiting

Fruit stand in a market!

The street Danni's dad lives on

Another view from front door of the house (San Juan del Rio). All the houses are colonial style, each with an enclosed driveway and open courtyard in the center between the different house units

Cactuses! (to eat) they're called Nopal

Tacos! At Danni's friend's family's street restaurant 

Fun fact we learned in class: Mexico changed it's name from Mejico when it gained independence from Spain as a means of starting to create it's national identity..too bad we butcher the pronunciation..

Feliz año! Happy new years! :)

I brought in the new year with setting off fireworks and drowing myself in mango juice, which was perfect. I hope you all had good start to the year <3

My first week and a half here has been a whirlwind of no sleep, constant thirst, and lots of queso.

My first day was a 21 hour day, not getting back to the hotel until 4am in the wee hours of Christmas morning after hours of eating, drinking, present-opening, and crazy banter between Danni's extended family.

I was so out of it the next day that I forgot that it was Christmas until I saw someone dressed as an elf walking down the street. The streets of Mexico City were empty...it's 20 million people off with family and friends :)

A visit to a botanical garden in one of the 16 neighborhoods of Mexico city later, we were on the road to San Juan del Rio, a two hour drive north to the state of Querétaro.

Some highlights while I have been here in Querétaro:

1. a hummingbird flying into the house (I've never seen a hummingbird before, it was wicked cool)
2. climbing this huge 65 million year old monolithic rock called La Peña Bernal (third largest monolith in the world after spain and brazil)
3. the puppy that we adopted for about an hour
4. night biking and running at a nearby park
5. musuem of the dead and walking around the city

6. food! (mexican stone-ground cinnamony chocolate, piña coladas, a sweet hibiscus drink, corn tortilla quesadillas, something called gorditos with heirloom giant corn)



gorditos! fired black corn meal outside with cheese, and filling (meat, beans, or corn, etc.)



We took a two-day trip to Mexico City. The highlights of that were going to the National Palace, where there are murals of Diego Rivera lining the four walls of the historic building where the presidential offices are located. They reccount Mexico's history from the Aztec migration to Spanish takeover and the current struggle of power between bank, church, and state. In this building, we were also able to see the Mexican declaration of independence and their constitution. After that, we went to Frida Kahlo's house. No big deal..



Figures in Teotihuacán Aztec ruins in Mexico City




Overlooking the old Basilica of Guadalupe



More pictures to come!