San Pancho, Guanajuato, D.F.

Slight delay on this blog. When I left off Julianne and I were in Oaxaca, Oaxaca. From there we took a 12 hour bus to Mexico City. We allowed a 2 hour buffer to transfer to our bus from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta because we had to buy both tickets in Oaxaca. Turns out getting into Mexico City on a weekday around 8 pm, isn't the best idea. We were supposed to arrive at 8 pm, our next bus left at 10:05 pm. At 10:00 pm we were still sitting in traffic one block from the bus station. One block!! But we weren't moving. We also couldn't get off because our luggage was stored underneath the bus. Typically, you are supposed to get to the bus 30 minutes before departure because you have to go through security (like an airport but more ghetto), and check your bags underneath. We arrived at the station at 10:03 pm and we sent Julianne to sprint to delay the next bus. If needed, she was instructed to stand in front of the bus Tienanmen Square style. I meanwhile was in the line for baggage. I could see our bags in the very back, and the guy was moving in slow motion. The stress was building and building because in addition to losing our money on the buses, about $100, it was the last bus of the night. 

So I took action. I jumped into the compartment underneath the bus and swam through the bags to the back to find our bags. The whole time the bus guy was screaming at me, but I didn't care. It had to be done. I emerged after about 20 seconds with the bags. I handed the tickets to the bus guy, who was not impressed, and sprinted through the bus terminal. As it was the Friday before Christmas, the bus terminal was packed. I had two suitcases and a backpack and I was weaving and bobbing through the crowd. At one point I bumped into a woman and she gave me a death stare, but I didn't care. I arrived at the bus completely out of breath, I sat down, and we immediately departed. I concluded that a good part of the goodwill I had been carefully cultivating as a Fulbright from September - December to betters US-Mexican relations was destroyed. But we made the bus. 

One of the funny things about the buses is that they all have this sign. It says "For your security, sit down to avoid accidents." This is in the men's bathroom. They want guys to sit down to pee. Of course no one did it, and the seat was covered in urine. 

San Pancho

Julianne and I arrived in San Pancho on December 23rd and immediately began intensely relaxing. Here we are with coconuts.

And a Michelada. We pretty much spent the whole day reading on the beach, very similar to Puerto Lopez in Ecuador. I've concluded that in Latin America, a beach town, is pretty much a beach town. There are some small differences, but there are always going to be surfers, hippies selling shitty homemade jewelry, and packs of beach dogs.  

San Pancho is technically called San Francisco. Pancho is the nickname for Francisco. Kind of like Bill from William or Dick from Richard. San Francisco even had its own mini Golden Gate Bridge.

Christmas was a little weird as it was just me and Julianne in a hostel, but we made some Canadian friends and even did a gift exchange. We also saw Jesus. He was just walking down the street. Seemed like a cool dude. 

4 days later on the day after Christmas, Mom came. Just in time for sunset. 

We spent one night in San Pancho and headed to Puerto Vallarta. We did the same stunt we did last year where we wait until the day before and booked a Hotel Tonight at Villa del Palmar. Going from San Pancho as a laid-back surfer town with a moderate amount of Mexican tourists to Puerto Vallarta with a ton of American tourists was a huge change. 

It was a Friday night, so we took a walk on the Malecon and found ourselves listening to Mariachi music. 

We spent two full days at Villa del Palmar, but just paid one night because we had a night bus the second day to Guanajuato. 

Guanajuato

We arrived at Guanajuato at 8 am in the morning after sleeping on the bus, and went straight to breakfast to wait for our AirBnB to be ready. If you ever go to Guanajuato, which I highly recommend as it's the best city in Mexico, it is obligatory that you eat breakfast or lunch here:

Guanajuato is just too amazing. I showed Julianne and Mom around all the little streets. We went to my taco spot, my quesadilla spot, Pipila, the Mummy Museum, and we found Raul the juice guy.


View from Pipila.


Teatro Juarez


Plaza de Baratillo. Little did I know when I took this picture that Sandra and I would stay here.

Drinks under a tree

We also spent New Year's Eve in Guanajuato. There was a huge stage set up in the town center. Everyone counted down and when the clock struck twelve, all of the bells in the all of the churches (about 8) started ringing and there was a massive firework show. Very impressive. However, subsequently when we tried to go to a bar, they were all empty. On New Year's Eve! How does that happen? In San Francisco you have to pay cover, you can't get a drink, finding a taxi is impossible. In Guanajuato there were literally like 3 people in the most popular bars: Golem, Oveja Negra. It made no sense. Our guess is that the young people go to the coasts for NYE, like Puerto Vallarta.

Meanwhile, our family members were celebrating around the world.
Seattle, WA

London


San Miguel de Allende
As a day trip from Guanajuato, we went to San Miguel de Allende, as everyone said it is amazing. San Miguel is cute, it has a really nice central plaza, but it doesn't have shit on Guanajuato. The prices are super high because San Miguel has become a super popular place for Americans to retire. We tried to have a coffee on the main plaza, but we were denied because they didn't even serve coffee. Who doesn't serve coffee? The answer is a place that wants to churn customers super fast and doesn't want coffee drinkers taking up space and not consuming any food. We spent a few hours, which was enough to see everything and went back to Guanajuato.

Teotihuacan:
From Guanajuato we went to Mexico City and stayed in my apartment. The next day we took the mandatory trip to Teotihuacan, the pyramids about 1 hour north of Mexico City.

Getting to the top of the Piramide del Sol is no joke. It's about 22 stories. 

But worth it...

It was completely packed because apparently it's good luck for Mexicans to go to Teotihuacan at the beginning of the year. 

Castillo de Chapultepec:
For the last day in Mexico City, we started at Chapultepec at the Castillo. The former presidential residence.

As we were leaving Chapultepec we noticed one of the massive poles that is used for the Danza de los Voladores (Dance of the Flyers). So we decided to stay and watch. It is an extremely risky activity where the Flyers climb a pole about 8 stories up. It requires careful preparation and warm-up. Here we can see them doing the traditional warm up: reading a newspaper. 

But seriously, these guys were high and the swing down upside down.

 From Chapultepec we walked along Avenida Reforma past the Angel of Independence.

And Cuauhtemoc (one of the last Aztec leaders)

To the Centro Historico, or Historic District. We had lunch at Cafe Tacuba.

 And finished off by going to the Zócolo and an artisan market called La Ciudadela.

And unfortunately with that, after 3 weeks for Julianne and 10 days for Mom, they took off early in the morning Sunday on flights back to Gringolandia. For me though, they had the perfect sampler platter of Mexico. Beach, mountains and colonial town, and the obligatory Mexico City. Mexico City is 30% of Mexico´s GDP. It´s hard to miss that. Overall, great trip and I am so glad they came!

Thanksgiving to Christmas

It's been a little bit, so thought I'd give an update. Starting with Thanksgiving in DC with Sandra and all her friends. 

First just a standard photo bomb. Came is last second with the Turkey leg.

From the left, Gabby (Sandra's new roommate, Ines, Gesen, then obviously).

Turned out pretty well for a Safeway turkey. Not as good as my turkey last year, but a lot less work. It's funny to celebrate Thanksgiving with foreigners because they are down for a big dinner, but they don't quite get the significance of Thanksgiving. They were making fun of the neighbours playing back yard football, but it's Thanksgiving! You have to throw a football around, even if you haven't played since last Thanksgiving. I was thankful that the Seahawks beat the 49ers and ate turkey in their new endzone. Overall had an amazing weekend and made me feel like the holiday season had started. Even had dinner with our hosts from Brazil this summer as Joao is a guest lecturer at Georgetown.

Coming back from DC was pretty brutal as I had had two consecutive short work weeks, 4 days and 3 days, and I had to transition back to 5 days plus studying for finals week. My first finals week in 4 years. My law class ended up being a 8 minute oral exam that was worth 70% of my grade. I was pretty nervous for that one and studied a ton. We'll see how I did. Fulbright says I need to have minimum grades of an 8 out of 10, which is actually pretty hard. 6 is passing so I am not sure why I need significantly above that.

The Friday of my first week back was the company Christmas party. Wow, this Christmas party kicked the crap out of Deloitte's Christmas parties where everyone is afraid of getting too drunk and saying something they shouldn't say. The Christmas party was more like a US wedding. It included a 3-course dinner with open bar the whole time, and a firm wide gift exchange. Everyone had to put 3 suggestions of what gift they would like, and I just put "Something typical from Mexico that you can't buy in the US." My wish was granted, when one of the partners got me a nice bottle of mezcal. Still haven't open it yet. The party had a dance floor and after dinner people started getting after it with salsa and whatever else was played.

My new mezcal. 

 

These are my coworkers. Everyone is between 20-35. There are partners older than that, but this is my cohort. Good group.  From left to right back row: Pamela, Taylor, Sabina, intern, Celeste, Carlos, Guadalupe, Fernando, Armando, Ricardo, Chava. Middle row: Ixtchel, Zulima, Monica. Front row: Cohen, Christian. I mostly work with Fernando and Ricardo.

 Even went to go see Wicked with Carlos. It was in Spanish and I couldn't understand some of the songs, but overall quite enjoyable.

 

Took this picture on Metrobus when it was particularly crowded. Accidentally had my flash on so everyone stared at me afterwards. My bad. I actually don't know how to turn off the flash on my Android phone. 

 Then Julianne arrived!! She didn't have the smoothest of trips (got robbed and missed a connecting flight), but she made it. Her first week she would meet up with my coworkers and I for lunch and would work on her applications and explore Mexico City by day. On Friday, we went to a Lucha Libre with my coworkers (many of whom had never been in their entire lives). Sometimes it takes a foreigner to do the things in your very own city. One of the fighters, Guerrero, would do this goofy dance after he did a good move. So we all decided to imitate it.

The next day after Lucha Libre, we took an 8 hour bus to Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a the capital of Oaxaca and is home to a number of indigenous communities in Mexico. During the Fulbright orientation I met a few anthropologists, and they were ALL going to Oaxaca.

Oaxaca has lots of cool little streets like this one. It is extremely colonial. 

All of the streets are decked out for the holidays as well. Hence random hanging piñata.

We explored the city pretty quickly, in about 4 hours, so we decided to head to the nearby Tule to see a giant tree. Apparently someone decided to build a city centred around a giant tree. It worked. Because now the city had tons of tourism and is extremely well kept. That's the tree on the right.

On our way back we found a FREE carnival. Yes, FREE. The government just paid for a carnival and people were going on all sorts of rides, including some pretty epic bumper cars. Mexicans are amazing at bumper cars because they have so much experience being crazy drivers in normal life. They were super good at dodging and weaving. 

 Mexico is super family oriented. Sundays is for families and the number of games, cars, and activities set up for children in the parks is insane. This particular one I had never seen before. It's a water coloring station. You pay to have your kid sit at an easel and paint their hearts out. Then no clean up. It's brilliant.

Anyway, Julianne and I will spend on more day in Oaxaca and leave tomorrow night on a night bus to Mexico City, then a bus to Guadalajara, then a bus to Puerto Vallarta, then a bus to Sayulita, then a taxi to San Pancho. It's going to be about 20 hours of travel and overall a pretty brutal day.

Lucha Libre, Día de los Muertos, Tequesquitengo, and Bullfighting

Haven't had a chance to update on my activities lately, so this post will be a weird combination of disjointed ideas. 

Lucha Libre:

First up, Lucha Libre, or Mexican Wrestling! Outside of the Arena there were tons of stands selling Lucha Libre masks and people were buying them like crazy. I should have bought one but I thought I would be a poser since I didn't know any of the fighters. I wanted to pick a fighter that I could identify with, not just any joe schmo, or jose schmo as it would be here.  

The whole event was hilarious. I thought it was going to be little kids, but it was full grown men screaming at the wrestlers. I was under the impression that everyone knew it was fake, but enjoyed pretending it wasn't and yelling. Since I went on Día de los Muertos, all the fights were themed Dead versus Living. They would come out in teams of three and do tag team fighting Dead versus Living. Each of the wrestlers had a name and a persona. My favorite was Maximo whose persona was a homosexual wrestler. His signature move was kissing the opponent, which rendered the opponent defeated. Everyone yelled like crazy when he kissed the other wrestler. Mexico definitely has a certain level of homophobia, but at Lucha Libre everyone seemed to think it was funny. Maximo also had a minion which was a midget dressed up as a bird. Everyone loved the minion and apparently he is really famous. At one point the object was the fight was the minion and the Dead and the Living were fighting over him and pulling him in different directions. I thought he might rip apart, but luckily he didn´t. Definitely would not be PC in the US. I'm told there is another wrestler with a gay persona called La Fresa Salvaje, or the Wild Strawberry. The name alone is amazing.

Día de los Muertos

I wanted to write more on Día de los Muertos, but I think this is going to be it. Basically, Mexicans think about death much differently than Americans do. Americans are afraid of death. Mexicans are afraid too, to a certain extent, but it is much less. Death, instead, is viewed as a natural process and progression of life. In the US, the second something changes from alive to dead, it is scary and gross. In Mexico, they celebrate their dead. Día de los Muertos is about honoring all those who are no longer with us physically, but who are still important to us mentally. It is said that people die two times. Once, when the person physically dies. And secondly, the last time that a living person says that person's name. The way you celebrate these people is by remembering them and making offerings, or ofrendas (see below). For the ofrenda, you put everything that the person you are remembering liked. If they like carrot cake, you make them carrot cake. Almost every ofrenda has beer for good measure. 

Here is a really good short film that shows the spirit of Día de los Muertos:

Tequesquitengo:

The most stressful thing about Tequesquitengo is pronouncing it. Tequesquitengo is like the Chelan of Mexico City. It is about 2 hours away and a bunch of rich chilangos (people from Mexico City) have houses there. I got invited to go and stay at the house of a super rich family. They had 2 full time employees at their guest house. Think about that for a second. Guest house. Not house house. It was a great chance to get out of the Concrete Jungle that is Mexico City. Saw stars for the first time in what felt like months. Look at the view from this freaking house:

The only downside, was that Tequesquitengo had a plague of no-see ums. Not sure what they are called, but they are bugs that bite you that are the size of fruit flies. You can´t see them at all. But damn do they leave their mark. I had 63 bites the first day.

We also went water skiing. Got up on my third try, which I feel like is pretty good since my water skiing career is one time that was over 10 years ago.

Bullfighting:
Went to a bullfight at the arena which is like 4 blocks from my house. Bullfights are quite the social event and definitely a place to be seen. It´s less fancy that a horse race, but the same kind of feel with everyone wearing hats. This was the first traditional bullfight I have been to. You may remember my post of Spanish bullfigthing on horses: http://leroyinargentina.blogspot.mx/2012/08/spanish-bull-fighting.html.

During the bullfight, I realized I don´t know shit about bullfighting. Yes, the premise is simple, wave red cape, bull charges, move cape, stab with sword, bull dies. But in practice there are all these weird formalities and stages involved. Here are the stages I identified:
1) Bull runs out, runs a few laps to get tired with the help of helper guys on the permiter of the ring who wave a pink flag and then hide behind a wooden barricade.
2) After the bull has done a few laps, the helper guys will actually go out into the ring a little bit and have the bull charge them, and they move out of the way. During this stage the capes are pink not red. At some point during this the lead matador guy will come out and take a few runs from the bull.
3) After the bull has done this for a little while, out come the yellow horses. This part I had never seen before and I thought it was SO bizarre. The horses march out with these yellow skirt things. The bull gets to freaking ram these horses, and while the bull is pushing against the horse, the guy on top of the horse is stabbing the bull in the back. He is called the picador, or picker. The idea is to get the bull tired and bleeding a little bit.

4) The horses march out, and the next stage is stabbing little flags with spears, or banderitas, in the back of the bull. The assistants bullfighters will run at the bull with two spears, juke the bull out at the last second, and stab two banderitas in the bull´s back. The ideal spot is centered on the bulls back and just below the neck. If they do it well, everyone cheers. If it is to the side, everyone heckles or is silent.
5) After 3 rounds of banderitas have left 6 banderitas in the bulls back, it´s time for the matador. It's easy to tell who the matador is because his cape is red, not pink. Red for kill. This is the stage with the most showmanship. The matador takes advantage of the tired and bleeding bull to do fancy dance moves while juking the bull. If the matador doesn't move his feet when the bull runs by, everyone says "Olé!." The best move that a matador can do is have the bull run by, and then circle back around and go back the other way without the matador moving his feet. The matadores would also do the cape behind their back or touch the bulls head. They were extremely close to the bull, but the bull was so tired that it worked. I also noticed that the bull doesn't see the matador as the threat. The bull was focusing exclusively on the red cape. Sometimes the matador would stand between the bull and the cape and the bull's head would follow the cape behind the matador's body. Like, "get out of my way, I'm trying to catch this cape."
6) After the showmanship is over and the bull is sufficiently exhausted, the matador gets his sword out. When the bull runs by, the matador stabs the bull in the back down through the bull's rib cage and ideally into the bulls heart. He doesn't always succeed as sometimes he hits bone. When this happens the crowd gets impatient. The crowd wants a clean kill with minimal suffering (kind of hypocritical given the entire activity of bullfighting in the first place). If the matador successfully put the sword in, the assitants run out and they have the bull stagger around in circles a few more times to let the sword do its work slicing and dicing the insides of the bull with each step. Eventually the bull collapses. A guy with a small knife runs out and hits the bull in the back of the neck in a particular part, and the bull is instantly killed. It's crazy how instant it is. It's like an off-switch.
7) Two horses attached to a cart come out. The bulls horns are attached to cart and the body is dragged out of the arena.

Family Shoutouts:

Congrats to my dad for bagging this year's turkey with the help of our two trusty retrievers.

And a shout out to William!