my weekend and a fixed link

So, I just realized that the link to the Jackson C. Frank song in my Pandora post doesn't work. Here is the correct link to his song "Blues Run the Game." I'll fix it in the other post, too.

In other news, I tackled my closet last night (finally). I'm going to get the rest of my room cleaned up this weekend. Once everything is sparkling I'll post some pictures. I have more photos from Mexico to put up, too, so hopefully that will get done within the next couple of days.

I spent most of this past weekend on my couch. My shoulder had been causing me tremendous amounts of pain so I finally went to the doctor on Friday morning. With the help of a muscle relaxer/painkiller cocktail my shoulder has greatly improved. Most of this time was spent reading.. it paid off because I finally finished The Prince of Tides. It was pretty good. (Next up: The Time Traveler's Wife.) I also spent a lot of time hanging out with Ashleigh and Carolyn, watching movies. I highly recommend Sunshine Cleaning, by the way. We did do one extremely exciting thing this weekend but I'm not going to post about that later!

Well, I'm going to turn in for the night. I have a meeting with the Sociology and Social Work department head in the morning, and then it's Latin for the rest of the day to prep for my first exam on Thursday: Puella defessa est Sara et dormire vult =]

Pandora- Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

I'm loving Pandora lately. My favorite station right now is based off of the song "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" by Bob Dylan.

Some of the songs on the station that I love right now (not including Dylan himself, since we all know I adore him) are:

*"Blackbird" - The Beatles

*"Catch the Wind" - Donovan

*"The Road I'm on (Gloria)" - Dion

*"Empy Chairs" - Don McLean

*"From the Morning" - Nick Drake

*"Blues Run the Game" - Jackson C. Frank

*"Kathy's Song" - Simon and Garfunkel

*"Landslide" - Fleetwood Mac [the original.. NOT the Dixie Chicks version.]

*"New Paint" - Loudon Wainwright III [live version; the song starts at 1:15]

*"A Good Time" - John Prine [I couldn't find the original, but here are a few covers: one. two. They're unfortunately not very good.]

*"What You Stole From Me" - Tom Kimmel [I love this, but it was impossible to find it online. The song is from a live album titled Bones; here are the lyrics.]

There have also been a few good covers of Dylan songs.. but ultimately none compare to the original songs.

recipe: Barbecue Sauce/Pulled Pork

I made pulled pork sandwiches today, and I must say, they were excellent. (I also made tuna macaroni salad, which was pretty good too.)

I had leftover shredded pork from last week. We had made a pork tenderloin in the crock pot with chopped onions for flautas, so I thought that making pulled pork sandwiches would be a good way to use up the leftover meat. I also made homemade barbecue sauce! And, since I am extremely generous (modest, too), I'm going to share the recipe. I think this originally came from a Paula Deen recipe but I'm not sure.

Barbecue Sauce

*1 cup ketchup

*1/4 cup brown sugar

*2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice (orange or lemon juice would work as well)

*1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce

*1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

*1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

*a few "dashes" of liquid smoke

*salt and pepper

Mix well, and let sit for at least an hour. I made it last night and left it in the fridge overnight. Pretty much all the ingredients can be adjusted according to taste. I personally added a bit more of the mustard and the cayenne pepper.

I threw my meat back in the crockpot on low, stirred in my bbq sauce and just let it sit all day until dinner time... and MMMMM was it good! Bon appetit!

el DF: parte dos b

[I split this post into two parts because it was just too long; this is the second half.]

After we left the basilica, we made our way to Teotihuacán, which is something like 30 miles outside of Mexico City. Before going to las pirámides (the pyramids), we stopped at a shop owned by local stone artisans-- El Sol: Piezas Finas en Obsidiana y Cuarzo (The Sun: Fine Pieces in Obsidian and Quartz). They provided tiny shots of tequila, pulque, and tuna juice (not the fish! the tuna is the fruit of the nopal cactus) so that we could taste them, but I'm a huge chicken so I passed on all of them. Then we got a demonstration on how they make their stone figures, after which point we got to poke around their shop. I bought a little pig and a little squirrel carved out of obsidian. After that, we took this picture:

...and then we had lunch there. Lunch was a very heavy type of corn bread with nopales (remember? cactus!), guacamole, and bananas for dessert:

We had some entertainment during lunch. As it turns out, Oscar is a mariachi singer in addition to being a driver, so he and some guys that just happened to be there and just happened to know how to play instruments performed for us. Gerson found an afro wig and jumped on the bongos (see, I told you he was weird) and Kyle joined him. Here's a picture of the "band":

From there, we drove to the pyramids. Teotihuacán was not, as is commonly though, built by the Aztecs. In fact, no one really knows anything for sure about the culture of the people that built the city, which is believed to have been home to as many as 200,000 people. When the Aztecs showed up some 700 years after the city had been abandoned, they gave it the name of Teotihuacán, a Nahuatl word meaning "the place where the gods were made", or "birthplace of the gods". They were quite impressed with the city, and took up residence there until the Spanish conquest. anyway.

This is a view of the Pirámide de la Luna, or the Moon Pyramid, taken when we first got to the central part of the complex. Note how the top of the pyramid looks a bit crunched in; a Japanese firm was excavating inside the pyramid until early this year, when the top section began to collapse. The firm was expelled and the internal structure fortified, but visitors are no longer allowed to climb to the top of the pyramid. We climbed as far up as we were allowed.

The steps on both pyramids were extremely steep. This picture was taken looking down the steps of the Moon Pyramid.

I love this picture. That's the Pirámide del Sol (Sun Pyramid) in the background.

Here's the standard tourist photo: me on the Moon Pyramid, with the Sun Pyramid in the background.

Yes, I wore a dress. Yes, it was a dumb idea.

View of the city with the Sun Pyramid

the Sun Pyramid

After much huffing and puffing, we all made it to the top of the Sun Pyramid!

Remember what I said about the dress? I've affectionately dubbed this picture "the Marilyn".

View of the Moon Pyramid

We had to walk a little ways to get out of the complex; this is the view on the way out.

After exhausting ourselves on the Pyramids, we headed back to the Hotel Moneda, where I discovered a nice sunburn (apparently I missed one of my shoulders with my sunscreen.. as well as the tops of my feet).  We just kind of hung out for a bit, I smashed my face into a metal locker, and then we headed to dinner. Kyle has some friends from his graduate program that are living in the city right now, so we met them for dinner. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was a cool little place. We got pizza and hung out for a couple of hours.

All of us were pretty beat by the time we got back to the hostel, so we went to bed relatively early so that we could get up early the next day and do yet another tour. Thus ended day #2 in Mexico City!

el DF: parte dos a

This post goes waaayyy back to my second day of three in Mexico City (I hate to admit this, but that was all the way back on July 11th). It's also extremely long, with approximately 20872027 photos. [update: the post was just too long, so I split it into two parts. This is the first half.]

Saturday morning, we got up early-ish and ate breakfast at the hostel. Then we headed downstairs to catch our tour. There were just five of us, which was a nice sized group: Kelly, Kyle, me, and a lovely Danish couple whose names I can't recall. I think the girl was named Ann, but beyond that I'm stumped. We loaded into a large van with Oscar, our driver, and Gerson, our very interesting tour guide. Case in point: he was wearing a giant sombrero.

First stop on the tour was Tlatelolco. First, we walked through the archaeological excavation (more ruins, surprise surprise). Tlatelolco was the twin city of Tenochtitlán. It was here that Hernán Cortés defeated the Aztecs under Cuauhtémoc in 1521, a decisive moment in Mexican history. An estimated more than 40,000 indigenous people died in that massacre.

the ruins at Tlatelolco; the building in the background is the museum.

Different constructions of the Templo Mayor, or main temple

Every so often, the Aztecs would build over their current temple to make it bigger.

"The 13th of August of 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtemoc, Tlatelolco fell into the power of Hernan Cortes. It was not a triumph nor a defeat. It was the painful birth of of the mestizo people that is the Mexico of today."

Next to the ruins is the Templo de Santiago, or church of Saint James, built by the Spanish in the seventeenth century. In Spain, James became the patron saint of the Reconquista: Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the Moor-Slayer. In Mexico, he underwent a transformation to Santiago Mataindios-- Saint James the Indian-Slayer. Our tour guide was quite incensed that Mexican people (who are essentially all mestizo) would worship at a church celebrating the murder of their "indian" ancestors.

Templo de Santiago

Between the ruins and the church is the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, or Plaza of the Three Cultures. It is so called because it is flanked by three different cultures: pre-Colombian (ruins of Tlatelolco), colonial Spanish (Templo de Santiago) and modern Mexican or mestizo (housing complex). This was the site of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, often referred to as la Noche Triste or the Sad Night. On the evening of October 2, 1968, Mexican police fired on a large student demonstration in the plaza. Several hundred people were killed, but the Mexican government placed the death toll at 30. These events are still a source of anger in Mexico today; the famous 1989 film Rojo Amanecer (Red Dawn) is about the massacre, and another film, Tlatelolco: Mexico 68, is currently rumored to be in production. It was definitely eerie standing in the plaza knowing what had happened there.

Me in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas

This is the memorial dedicated to those who died in the 1968 massacre.

After that, we drove to Tepeyec and the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, or Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Virgin of Guadalupe is arguably the most recognizable symbol of Mexico. By legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to the indian Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in the early sixteenth century and left her image burned into his cloak, which he had filled with roses. Construction on the basilica in her honor, which would house the cloak with the Virgin's image, began shortly thereafter but was not finished until nearly 200 years later, in the early eighteenth century. There are actually two basilicas at this site now. The new, much larger basilica (Nueva Basílica) was built in the 1970s because the old one (Antigua Basílica) was --guess what?-- sinking. The basilica is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. Some estimates place it second only to Vatican City. The church was stunning.. and it was absolutely packed.

the Antigua Basílica

the Nueva Basílica

Me in front of the basilicas

This is the interior of the Nueva Basílica. The photo doesn't really do it justice, but it was gorgeous.

My favorite part was the view from the Capilla del Cerrito (Chapel on the Hill), which is a climb above the rest of the site.

Here's me with the basilicas and the city in the background.

Kelly, Kyle and me

View from the Hill

a rose in the church gardens

Cinnaberry!

I dyed my hair about two weeks ago, and I really liked it but I used semi-permanent dye and it faded really quickly. So, I bought another box! My friend Ashleigh helped me dye it last night when we were supposed to be doing homework. Here's the finished product, since I didn't put up a picture last time. Hopefully the color sticks around longer this time!

The color is darker than the camera would have you believe, but I still like it. By the way, for those interested, I used Clairol Natural Instincts in #22 Cinnaberry (Medium Auburn Brown).

new photo

Still working on photos and such, both from Mexico and the start of the school year, but for now here is a photo that I took while walking up to El Pípila in Guanajuato (and edited in Photoshop). Click on it for a larger view.

still alive.. x2

I've been egregiously absent from the blog lately, I know. I got back from Mexico about a week and a half ago and since then have been a. exhausted; b. working; c. sick; or d. some combination of the above. It looks like this cold is both a. going away and b. not the swine flu, though, so that's good.

I'll do my best to keep posting about Mexico. I have a ton of pictures still! In the meantime, I'll be working and packing before my move back to Marquette next Sunday.

todavía estoy viva

My apologies for having been MIA. It's been a busy week.. and I don't think this week (our last.. qué triste) will be any better. I'll try to get some posts up soon, I'm super behind on pictures and everything. We went to San Miguel de Allende yesterday and Querétaro today, so the backlog is growing. The majority will probably have to wait until after I get home.

In other news, Amber and I had a conversation in our sleep the other night. In Spanish. I guess at least we are practicing.

lo peor que me pasó en el DF

I fought the locker...

...and the locker won.

This is the worst thing that happened to me while I was in Mexico City. I have really poor depth perception when I'm not wearing my glasses, and I'm super smart so I don't wear them all the time. So, Saturday night I bent down to pick up my water bottle, which had fallen between my bed and the locker, and smashed my face into the corner of the locker. This picture actually doesn't do the injury justice. The wound was quite deep and bled a fair amount; I was actually worried that I might have to get stitches. Luckily, it stopped bleeding, and my tetanus shots are up to date so I wasn't too terribly concerned by the next day. It hurt like hell though.. and I got a nice bruise, which then proceeded to turn yellow. Super attractive. Just thought I'd share that with you folks.

popurrí

There is a really, really whiny little girl next door who has approximately 84 nuclear-grade meltdowns every day. She seems to have a sixth sense for when she is going to irritate the most people possible in a ten block radius.. especially if those people (*cough* me *cough*) are trying to nap. The whining and the crying and the shrieking is really just a bit much. I will definitely not miss her when I leave.. which, incidentally, is less than two weeks from now. Hard to believe we've been here this long.

This weekend we just bummed around and went to some museums. Friday night we went out with some friends from school, as it was Andrew's last night here. We went on a tour of the city with the callejoneadas; click the link to see who they are/what they do. It was an interesting experience for me in particular. I'll post some pictures & an explanation eventually.. ¡ojalá! After that we went to Zilch for a couple of hours. Jaime, Amber and I were pretty tired so we left "early" (probably around 2am).

Saturday, we got up, ate breakfast, and then went back to bed. Well, Amber and Jaime napped, but I messed around with blogger until I finally got up my Mexico City post. We eventually went to the Museo Casa Diego Rivera after we had lunch, which is a museum dedicated to Diego Rivera located in his childhood home. There were a couple of contemporary exhibits too, but nothing by which I was particularly impressed. Afterwards, we came back here and I napped.. not sure about the others. About 8:30 we went downtown and got pizza at a place called Peter's Pizza. It was super good but we had way too much food. After that, we walked around for a while and then went to El Bar. Apparently Saturday is the big night for salsa there so we wanted to check it out. At first it was okay, but after a while this guy started bothering us. He sat at our table, insisted we move to his table, we said no, so then he brought the case of beer that he had purchased to our table for us to drink. Well, we're not stupid, so none of us touched it. We didn't want to be rude so we each "danced" with him a little bit, but I swear he was on drugs. None of his sentences made sense, except when he was trying to get one of us to go home with him. At first it was just annoying, but eventually he started to creep us out. José, one of the dance instructors, and his friend (girlfriend?) came to sit with us after a while because he could see that the guy was bothering us. Eventually he picked Amber up (as in lifted her in the air) on the dance floor so we left immediately after that. I think we were too worried about being rude, because none of the Mexican women there paid him the slightest bit of attention, unless it was to tell him that NO they did not want to dance with him and NO they did not want any of his beer and NO they were not going to go home with him. We really probably should have been more firm. For my part, I didn't interact with him as much as the other girls because I ended up dancing with a different weirdo-- long hair, tight pants and ugly boots. It was an excellent combination. Really the icing on the cake was that every ten second he would say "Eso, eso es (For the intonation, it was more like "Esssoohh, essooohhh es"; translates as "That's it, there you go," because I actually kind of have an idea of what I'm doing.) It was kind of creepy but he really seemed pretty harmless so I think it was more funny.. or, at the very least, it's more funny now. At any rate, he was better than the creeper who wouldn't leave us alone. After that, we were pretty disillusioned with the whole going-out scene (not to mention pissed off), so we just went home. It didn't help that earlier in the evening, a man had run by on the sidewalk and slapped Amber's butt (and kept running). We were not exactly pleased. (Sidebar-- the same thing happened to me in Almuñecar, Spain, two years ago... except that the perpetrator in this case was a 12-year-old boy. I'm really not sure which is worse.)

Sunday, we went to the Museo Iconográfico del Quijote, which is a museum entirely full of artists' representations of Don Quijote. Pretty cool. As I mentioned, Rosario essentially started the museum and I believe was in charge of it until she retired. We saw her friend Paco while we were there. I think he runs it now but I could be wrong; at the very least he works there. Part of the reason that we went Sunday is that admission is free.. can't beat free! After that, we shopped a bit and then came home and ate. After lunch, we discovered that we had an avian visitor and spent the next fifteen minutes trying to chase it out of our house. The bird must have flown in through the door/window upstairs that we leave open because of the heat. When I came upstairs he was in the bathroom, and when he heard us he got really agitated, flew around the room, into the wall and then fell down the staircase opening. He seemed okay though because after a while we got him to fly out the door downstairs. After that we napped (or tried to, given that the brat next door had like seven gran mal fits over god knows what). We stayed in the rest of the evening and just kind of hung out. Fortunately the internet was working again because earlier in the day it wasn't. I think we all needed the time to relax.

We started new classes again today. This week, we have a grammar class, two conversation classes, the latin dance class, a class on the history of Mexico and a class on Mexican culture, specifically art. It should be interesting. Hopefully not too much homework this week!

Well, I'm off to relax for an hour before I have to get ready and go to salsa classes. The girls tell me I didn't look half bad Saturday night so hopefully I'm getting something out of it! Now if we could only find some place to take salsa lessons in Marquette...

el DF: parte uno

Last weekend I went to what Mexicans refer to as el DF (“day eff-ay”; Distrito Federal), or Mexico City. Some people from my school were going and after giving it a lot of thought I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I promise, we were extremely careful and very aware of our surroundings at all times. We didn’t have any trouble while we were there at all, and we had a lot of fun. The city is HUGE though (something like 25-30 million inhabitants), and was definitely kind of overwhelming at times.

Kyle, Kelly and I left Thursday afternoon after I got out of classes (they finished earlier in the day). We took a taxi to the bus station to get our tickets for Mexico City. The trip takes about five hours from Guanajuato. Kyle and Kelly had gone the day before to check out the different bus lines and compare prices, and in the end we went with ETN, which was superb. Seriously, it was great. There were only three seats per aisle rather than four, and they were huge, with tons of leg room. You could even recline without feeling like you were squashing the person behind you. They gave us sandwiches and drinks before we got on the bus, and they even had played movies on flip-down TVs. The best part was that it only cost us $190 pesos each, after our student discount (50%), which is roughly $14USD. (One way, but still not bad compared to Greyhound!)

Here's Kelly and I relaxing on the bus!

We arrived about 9pm to the city’s north bus terminal (there are four total). For a bus station, it was huge. I’ve been in smaller airports.. including the one in León that I’ll be flying out of when I come home. From there, we took a secure taxi from the bus station to our hostel. Our taxi driver was super nice. He chatted with us the whole way there about the US and Mexico (he lived in LA for a few years) and was just generally really friendly. He told us he worked in John Travolta’s house for a while.. whether or not this is true is anyone’s guess, but it’s an interesting story nonetheless!

We stayed at the highly recommended Moneda Hostel. Earlier in the day we had booked a three-person room at about $17/night per person. It is only a block away from the city’s historic center, which is called the Zócalo. We didn’t do anything the first night except go to sleep pretty early.

This is a view of our room, with my bed. The window looks into a ventilation shaft.. lovely.

This is the view down our street, Calle Moneda, looking towards the Zócalo. 

This is the view from the fifth floor terrace, looking towards the Zócalo (the big building is the Cathedral).

Friday morning we got up about 9, and my roommates informed me that I’d been talking in my sleep in Spanish.. at least I’m practicing the language, I guess! We ate (free) breakfast at the hostel, and then we went on a walking tour of the city. The hostel contracts a tour company, so we just did their tours all weekend and we were really pleased with them. The walking tour was free for hostel guests, which is cool.

We started at the Templo Mayor. Mexico City was built over top of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which covered an island of about five square miles, surrounded by a lake. So, basically anywhere you dig in the city you’ll find Aztec ruins. The ruins of the Aztec temple/pyramid were discovered in 1978 by workers laying electricity cables. It’s been restored a bit by the archaeologists to provide a better idea of what it looked like. It’s definitely strange to see an archaeological excavation in the middle of an urban area.

View of the Templo Mayor

The Templo Mayor is kitty-corner from the city’s Cathedral (la Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María). The Spaniards had a penchant for razing buildings in the cities they conquered and building over them, which is exactly what happened with the construction of the Catedral Metropolitana. The Cathedral took almost 250 years to build and it is the biggest and the oldest cathedral in the Americas.

Here's me, in front of the east entrance of the tabernacle attached to the Cathedral.

If the building looks crooked, it’s because it is. Mexico City is sinking by something like 10cm/year. Parts of the city have sunk around 30ft in the last century alone, and because the weight is not evenly distributed, very old very heavy buildings are at high risk for damage/collapse. Many, including the Cathedral, actually have hydraulic systems installed underneath in order to mitigate the effects of the sinkage. Isn’t that crazy? I suppose I ought to mention why this is occuring. As I said, the Spaniards built over Tenochtitlan, and eventually expanded the city outward and outward by draining the lake (Lake Texcoco) that surrounded the island city. The soil (which is mostly clay, I believe) is very soft and unstable. Probably not the best idea Hernán Cortés ever had.

After the Cathedral, we went to the Palacio Nacional, which is the government palace. We got checked again for swine flu when we entered. They seem to be taking it really seriously, which is probably good. Hand sanitizer dispensers have been installed everywhere. The biggest reason to visit the Palacio is to see the Diego Rivera murals on its walls. It was so cool!

Here I am in front of the main Diego mural inside the palace.  ¡Qué impresionante!

After the Palacio Nacional, we stopped at the biggest bakery in Mexico City. They had giant wedding and quinceañera (15^th birthday; it’s a huge deal here) cakes everywhere, which was neat to see. After that, we went inside the post office for a few minutes; it’s gorgeous.

The staircase inside the post office

We then walked across the street to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, or Palace (Museum) of Fine Arts. The tour ended there (outside), and the three of us really wanted to go in but we decided to have lunch first. We ate at a little restaurant, tacos and such, and then went back. I loved the museum.. I am an art nerd though. It doesn’t have a ton of paintings, but it does have some really famous murals by the “Big Three”: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. There was also a Tamara de Lempicka exhibit, which I really liked. Unfortunately, we weren't there early enough in the day to see the Tiffany stained glass "curtain" in the theatre part of the Palacio, but we still enjoyed the museum.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Here's me with the famous Siqueiros mural "Nueva Democracia" ("New Democracy"). It's one of my favorites.

After the museum, we went back to the hostel. Then we took a taxi to the Museo Nacional de Antropología and just barely made it there before the 5pm cut-off time. The museum closes it’s doors at 5pm, but it is open until 7pm for those who are already inside. The Anthropology Museum is often compared to our Smithsonian, and we were really looking forward to going. It was cool but I prefer art to artifacts.. it was a lot of bowls and rocks and stuff. There was definitely some interesting Aztec stuff, but overall there was just too much to see. It was really overwhelming. I’m glad we went though.

Here's me in front of "El Paraguas" ("The Umbrella"). It's a large carved pillar with a water fountain around the top.

After that, we went back to the hostel again, ate dinner there and hung out in the room for a while. They were having a party on the top (5^th) floor of the hostel (right above us; it’s like a bar/place for meals) and the music was super loud in our room, so I talked to the girl at the desk and she moved us from the fourth floor to the first, which helped a bit.. not much though because all the rooms are connected by ventilation shafts so everything echoes. But, we were all so tired that night that we pretty much passed out regardless of the music.

Here's our second room. Note the lovely colors on the walls.

Well, that was our first day in Mexico City! I’ll post about the rest as soon as I’m able.