The Basilica of Guadalupe

Another day, another adventure here in DF! To take advantage of this sunny Monday morning, I jumped on the Metrobus and took off to the famous La Villa, a site that contains several churches and religious buildings. The Basilica of Guadalupe, the most famous site in La Villa, is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Roman Catholic religion. Every year, millions of people make a pilgrimage to the Basilica to pay homage to the Virgin Mary on December 12th. It is believed that Mary appeared there (about 500 years ago) to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, and she asked him to build a temple for her.

"I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection. Because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; to listen there to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows. And to accomplish what my clemency pretends, go to the palace of the bishop of Mexico, and you will say to him that I manifest my great desire, that here on this plain a temple be built to me."  (From http://www.sancta.org/basilica.html)

People now walk for days to visit this site, coming from states all over Mexico, and many walk the last few miles on their knees. Today during my visit, I saw a few people walking on their knees in the square in front of the Basilica. Maybe they're starting early this year?

The new Basilica, where people make a pilgrimage each December. See the man in the red shirt walking on his knees?

The old Basilica, where construction began in 1531. 

The front facade of the old Basilica.

The front of the new Basilica

Inside the old Basilica, a beautiful building with marble shrines and large paintings on the walls.

One of the paintings in the old Basilica.

Another section of the old Basilica, with a small golden chapel inside, connecting the two larger buildings.

The small golden chapel between the two larger parts of the old Basilica.

In the picture of the full outside of the Basilica, this is
the inside of the building on the right side of the church.

The inside of the new Basilica. I didn't want to take too many pictures during mass, but I had to
 snap at least one to show you! Besides, they have mass every hour on the hour from 6 in the morning
until 8 at night, so there's really no time that could I get a picture without people worshiping in it...

Behind the old Basilica, and up several flights of stairs, is the Capilla
de Cerrito. From there, you can get a great view of all Mexico City.

In front of the Capilla de Cerrito, there are four statues of the angels Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, and Raphael.
But, ever since I've started watching Dr. Who, I'm terrified of angel statues. And I never blink.

The view from the Capilla del Cerrito. You can't see in the picture,
but in real life, you can see the mountains surrounding the city.

The shrine to the Virgin Mary, where Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
 is said to have seen an apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The Capilla del Pocito, the last stop of my day in La Villa. 

From there, it was only a 15-minute walk to the Metrobus station, where I was able to take a direct bus for about 45 minutes back to my apartment. But, not before grabbing a delicious horchata-water to quench my thirst from walking all over La Villa! (For those who don't know what horchata-water is, it's a sweet and yummy milky water made from rice, almonds, and cinnamon. It tastes like the nectar of fairy kisses, unicorn tears, and essence of rainbow. It's that good.) After shooting a half-liter of horchata directly into my veins, I jumped on the Metrobus and witnessed two ladies get into a hair-pulling and face-slapping fight over a box. Jerry Springer should have been there. The police even escorted them off the bus! Oh yes, it's the little things that keep Mexico City an everyday adventure.

Muppet!

GUESS WHAT? I have a new roommate! I adopted a baby........hedgehog! He's now 2 months old, but I've had him since he was 5 weeks.

His name is Muppet.

Muppet lives in a glass tank on my dresser, but he gets to walk around my room whenever I'm home. He loves eating, pushing things around with his nose, and making as much noise as he possibly can. He accomplishes this by biting his water bottle, pulling his head back, then letting it go so it hits against the tank wall. (Trust me, it's my favorite when he does this for 15 minutes straight at 2:00 in the morning).

However, loud noises are only okay when he makes them. Any other noise, apparently, is terrifying to him. I'm hoping it's just because he's a baby, because it's kind of sad. Phone calls, sneezes, opening doors and windows, zipping up my backpack, regular conversation---they're all SUPER SCARY. So he curls into a little Muppet-ball and hyperventilates until he feels the danger is gone.

Scared Muppet. Oh yeah, camera clicks are really scary too.

When Muppet isn't scared, he's playful and likes exploring.

Muppet likes to be warm, and spends a lot of time sleeping on his heating pad. He also likes to sleep in my sweatshirt hood.

So...that's my most recent news from D.F.! I have no really good excuse for not posting in awhile, other than that I've been relatively busy with the new job and the places that I want to post about are all swamped on the weekends...Hopefully I'll have a chance to explore some lesser-crowded areas soon!

Near my Apartment

I live in a nice, safe area called Escandon. My street, Jose Marti, is a mix of smallish apartment buildings and small businesses. A lot of small families and couples live on my street. Luckily for me, most everything I need is right on my street. We have lots of little delicious/cheap restaurants, cafes, office supply stores, internet rent cafes, hardware stores, bakeries, auto shops, convenience stores, gas stations, laundromats, butcher shops, cleaning supply stores, furniture stores, and my favorite: the fruit and veggie market. Yesterday, I went to the fruit and veggie market, and bought 2 big bags full of mangoes, oranges, and bananas for just 43 pesos--less than $4 U.S. dollars. Jose Marti is a very convenient street to live on!

Close by, there are some pretty places to visit. One that I walk by almost every day is the big church, San Jóse de la Montaña. It's right next to the metro, which is about 10 minutes northwest of my apartment, and there's usually one or two people selling handmade jewelry/candles at the churchfront. I've never been inside, but the outside is quite pretty I think:


Iglesia San Jóse de la Montaña

That church is on the corner of Benjamin Franklin y Patriotismo. If you take Patriotismo south, you'll pass my street, Jose Marti, and begin to see the World Trade Center in D.F. It's about a 10 minute walk southeast from my apartment, and a very impressive building. Impossible to fit the whole building into one picture, though!

World Trade Center, D.F.

North of my apartment, there is a neighborhood called Condesa. Condesa is a district with a lot of restaurants, yoga studios, and little boutique shops. Upon entering Condesa, there is a street called Amsterdam, which runs in a big oval around a park called Parque Mexico--a lovely place to walk and run.

"You are now entering Condesa."

The fountain picture above is on the street Amsterdam. Also on this street is one of my favorite restaurants/juice bars, Frutos Prohibidos. In my opinion, they make some of the the best juices in the city. Crossing Amsterdam will lead you to Ave. Mexico, which hugs Parque Mexico. The park is a great place to enjoy the trees and breathe in some fresh air.

Along the walking paths in Parque Mexico

The pond in Parque Mexico--a good place to stop, rest, and feed the ducks. Careful, the ducks are a bit food-aggressive!

Attack-duck

I love how green Condesa is. Nestled in the center of the concrete jungle known as D.F., it's a nice little oasis to get some nature, beauty, and fresh air. And, it's only about 15 minutes from my apartment!

I haven't done much exploring directly east or west, because those areas are mainly office buildings and aren't so scenic. If I discover something noteworthy in those areas, I'll add an update to this post!

Letter Home

So, it's only been about 2000 years since my last post, and unfortunately, I don't have anything too exciting to report today. Earlier this month, as some of you know, my grandfather passed away and I flew back to Iowa just in time to say goodbye. I'm glad I had that opportunity, and I was really happy and blessed to see my family, despite it being a sad time.

I came back to D.F. on Thursday, June 13th, and it's been a whirlwind of work since then. I now teach 8 groups a week, which is 36 hours. I spend a lot of time commuting (approximately 18 hours every week), as this city is huge. On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I walk to and from work in Polanco in the mornings, which takes about 45 minutes. Every weekday afternoon/night, and Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I walk 30 minutes and bus for 15 minutes to and from work in Del Valle. So, 54 hours of my week are dedicated getting to/from work and teaching. (Not counting lesson prep time, which I arrive at least a half hour early for). My earliest class starts at 7 am, and my latest class ends at 9:45 pm. As you can see, I'm left with little time to play tourist, and usually try to catch up on sleep whenever I get the chance.

Sunday is my one free day, which is when I usually can get out and enjoy life a bit. Tomorrow's Sunday, though, is going to be an indoor day. Here in D.F., it's been raining like crazy for the past four days--courtesy of Tropical Storm Barry. Even though we're about 4 hours from the Gulf, we're still feeling some of the effects from the storm. The rain will continue tomorrow. It could be a good day to visit museums, if I can muster up the will to walk for awhile in the rain sans umbrella. We'll see. Today, I appreciate the rain. It gives me an opportunity to do things that I've been needing to do--like clean my apartment, call my parents, make a blog post letting everybody know I'm still alive...There's a chance I'll go with some friends to see a movie tonight, if the rain lets up long enough for me to walk to the subway. I've been sick since Thursday, a mix of cold rain and bad drinking water, and I want to try to avoid walking in the rain whenever I can.

In four days, I'll be on my way to Colorado: Mom's getting married!! I'll be there for 10 days, so this is my last full weekend in D.F. until mid-July. If I do get a chance to post about any random excursions here, I'll definitely do so. If not, well....I'll be back soon enough :)

All the best!

XOXO

-Haley

Going to Work

Hey, I'm still alive! Our internet at home has been broken for a few weeks now, which is why I haven't posted anything or done much emailing at all. We're supposed to get a new modem installed this week (actually, it was supposed to be installed two days ago), but it's D.F., and there are no guarantees. The last few weeks have been busy with work, and next week is going to be even more full. I'm really happy in my job, though. I work in three locations around the city, depending on the day. Most often, I work in Polanco--a wealthy business district. Other days I go and do an on-site company class at a company that makes appliances (refrigerators, stoves, washers, etc.), located in what I call "The Skyscraper District." On Tuesday and Thursdays, I work in another branch of our offices near the metro station "Nativitas." The office is very nice, but the area is not particularly beautiful. On Thursdays, I work in all three locations--it's a lot of commuting!

I really enjoy when I work in Polanco, because I can walk to work from my apartment. It takes about 45 minutes each way. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I walk to and from Polanco twice each day. I leave from my apartment and start walking through my neighborhood: Escandon. It's busy but quiet, nice and safe. It's neither a business district nor a residential district, it's more of a mix of the two on a small scale. There are lots of trees and flowering bushes on the sides of the street :)

Flowering tree

Soon, my neighborhood ends, just as I pass a pretty park called Parque Mexico. It turns into Condesa--a really pretty district with lots of cute restaurants, cafes, and bars. It's a very popular nightlife area, and it's always bustling and loud when I'm walking home at night. After I walk through Condesa, I come to a street called Sonora, which has a mix of small businesses and apartment buildings. On this street, I'll see my "20 minutes from work" landmark: the big, glass IXE tower.

Almost there!

On the left side of the IXE tower, I pass some sort of monument, but it's not a particularly impressive one. To me, it just looks like a really tall, bleached wafer cookie.


Giant cookie!

Right after I walk between the monument and the IXE building, I take the Chapultepec underpass, and then immediately after climb up onto a bridge that passes over 3 major highways.


Ah, don't breathe in the car fumes...

About 15 minutes from there, I get into the prettier part of Polanco, and arrive to the office!



One of the rooms where I teach :)

In the mornings, I teach there for 90 minutes, and in the evenings, I teach two back-to-back classes, leaving me there for a cozy three hours. It's really a fun job!

That's all for today, time to go teach again...



El Metro

Ah, the metro. We have such a love/hate relationship. Well, not love. It's more of a toleration/hate relationship. The metro is definitely the quickest way to go somewhere 5+ kilometers away, which is really good (when you accidentally overslept and your class starts in less than an hour). It's also dirt cheap. For 3 pesos, or roughly 25 cents, you can enter the station and make unlimited transfers. They have these handy little prepaid cards that you just scan and enter. (I'm guessing they have these in every single subway system around the world, but as I have never taken a subway before arriving in D.F., to me these cards are magic.

My magic card!

So, step inside on of the D.F. metro stations.Take a deep breath in. No, wait, bad decision. Cough that out. Try not to breathe too deeply--the metro station smells like a mix of the 12 million people it serves daily, overheated machines, cheap cleaning products, and fast food. (Keep in mind that it's very hot in the metro stations--so those 12 million people? They're all sweating. Ewwwwww...)

If you listen hard enough, you can probably hear the DF metro from Iowa. It is so noisy! People chatting. Screeching trains. Vendors yelling advertisements for their products (both in the stations and on the train cars). They sell anything and everything: food and drinks, magazines and newspapers, toys for children, phone chargers and headphones, cleaning products, beauty and health products, even drain stoppers. The thing I absolutely despise is how the music vendors advertise their product. They hop on the subway car with speaker-backpacks, and blast terrible music at deafening volumes. Right among all the people, who are trapped in the car until the next stop. The live music performers, on the other hand, (well, some are still awful and probably tone-deaf), some are quite talented. I'm thinking of the man who plays the fiddle in the Tacubaya station, or the group of young men and women who play wooden drums in the cars that travel along the blue line, or the occasional talented singer/guitarist who hops on the train car. All looking for money, but all practicing an art (and they usually aren't pushy about asking for money). My favorite noise-makers are the live performers :) Except the tone deaf ones. They seem to think that the louder they sing, the better they get. Yikes!

My "home station," Patriotismo, is luckily one of the least busy stations in the city!

The picture above is of my "home station" which is almost never busy, but step into a station like Tacubaya, Chilpancingo, Auditorio, or Polanco and you really start to understand the quantity of people here. 21 million people live in this city, and the metro is the most popular mode of transportation. You see all types of people, all ages, all sizes, all attitudes. The grumpiest people to the sweetest people, the needy and those well-off. Lots of police, in theory to keep everything running smoothly. One thing I do genuinely like about subway culture is that chivalry is not dead. People immediately give up their seat to a pregnant woman, a woman carrying a baby, an elderly person, a handicapped person, or an injured person. Men give their seats to women. Even in the busiest, most crowded, and hottest metro lines, kindness lives on. It almost makes up for the times when the subway is so crowded that the outside people start pushing and cramming everybody together in the car like sardines. Almost.

The metro is hot, sticky, noisy, grubby, smelly, and crowded. But, it's cheap, really convenient, and somehow entertaining. With a little hand sanitizer, the metro is...tolerable.

The Prettiest Walk

After spending just over 3 months total in D.F., I'm becoming very familiar with select parts of the city. My hands-down favorite place to walk is definitely along Paseo de la Reforma (one of the major streets here), and in certain areas of the Zocalo (city center). My walk starts from the Metro Auditorio:


Big grey building: The Auditorio Nacional (National Auditorium)

I walk towards the area with lots of museums--my favorite being the Museo de Antropologia (Anthropology Museum). On my right, I pass a beautiful park, Parque de Chapultepec, which is a very very large park and another nice place to walk. Inside the Chapultepec Park's gates, you can find a lake, a castle, a zoo, botanical gardens, more museums, monuments, fountains, walking paths, and loads of street vendors.

After walking straight along Reforma for awhile, the Angel de la Independencia comes into view. This is a very large, very beautiful monument located in a roundabout intersection of several important streets.


The Independence Monument--I hear you can go up to the top, which is on my list of things to do!

Continuing to walk for another few blocks, the top of the Revolution Monument can be seen off to the left, and though it is not directly on Reforma, it is well-worth the detour.


You can also take the elevator to the top of the Revolution Monument, which I have done, and the view is spectacular! The entrance fee is cheap, too.

 Returning to Reforma, I continue walking towards the Zocalo, passing several tall buildings, restaurants, shops, statues, and greenery along the way. When I come to the intersection with the El Caballito statue (The Pony statue), I veer right on the intersecting road.



"El Caballito" is the bright yellow sculpture

 After walking awhile longer, the top of the Palacio de Bellas Artes becomes visible. Continuing straight down that road takes you right to it.

Bellas Artes. I love this place.

I used to think that Bellas Artes/the Zocalo would be nice places to sit in the shade and read a book. I've learned better. While they are quite beautiful and comfortable places to sit and read, I have repeatedly had this problem where young men, complete strangers, seem to believe that when someone is reading it's a good time to strike up a conversation and get super-friendly-chatty (to the point of uber-creepiness). So, sitting alone and reading has become a no-go for me in this area. Walking and stopping briefly to take a picture or two is okay, though people still try to stop me and chat. Usually at that point, I just ignore the person completely, or pretend that I don't speak a word of Spanish or English. It sounds awfully rude, I know, but here in Mexico City it's necessary--traditional Iowan politeness ends up wasting loads of time.

My walk continues onto the street Francisco I Madero, a street only for pedestrians that is hell to try to walk through on weekends. (The Sunday afternoon crowd is the worst.) This street is always bustling with people walking to the many trendy stores and restaurants on either side. It's also a good place to see street performers any day of the week, especially on Saturdays. My favorite restauant is actually on a street intersecting with this one, just 2 blocks off.

Francisco I Madero, the least busy I have ever seen it. Monday at noon is the time to go???

Walking to the end of this street, you will finally come to the Zocalo--the city center, a really big square. On one side, there is the beautiful Catedral Metropolitana. Another side is occuppied by the Palacio Nacional, and the other 2 sides of the square are long lines of stores--mainly gold and overpriced jewelry stores. Nestled between and kind of behind the Cathedral and National Palace is the Templo Mayor--an old Aztec pyramid/temple that was discovered quite by accident in the 1980's. I think admission to the pyramid + museum is only 57 pesos (about $5USD), and well worth the cost.

Catedral Metropolitana

Part of Templo Mayor, with the Cathedral in the background

The National Palace--a very long building, with many murals by Diego Rivera on the inside.

Total, that walk takes a little over an hour, without stopping. It could definitely be made into a day trip, or longer, touring the inside of the buildings and taking pictures!