Comida (Food) Everything in Mexico seems to come with hot sauce or limon and chili. Here in Oaxaca there is mezcal flavored ice cream with chili in it. The salsa that people eat is either green or red. It is never chunky. Never. Sometimes the red sauce is not too hot, just kind of smokey. The green sauce usually contains jalapeños and avocado. Sometimes the green sauce does not contain avocado and is extremely spicy. When dining with a Finnish couple outside Mitla we were humored with a story of how the caustic green sauce was mistaken to be the mild [View Full Entry]

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After being here for a little less than two weeks things are finally starting to fall into place. What is taken for granted in the U.S. cannot be in Mexico. Sometimes this is downright charming and in other cases one is left wondering what to think. Perros de la calle or Dogs of the street Mario had told Tessa and I stories about (or more correctly stated, cautioned us about) the dogs in small towns. In Mexico Cuidad other than pigeons, the only animals I noticed were the bees swarming around fruit vendors and a lone cat lurking under a VW [View Full Entry]

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People In general everyone has been warm. This may be do to the strong sense of family which is evident whenever observation is made. During breakfast I noted a father cutting up some version of a tortilla with cheese on it for one of his children. The manner in which he was attending to his child was infused with a certain tenderness often lacking in parent/child interactions in the United States. This humanity comes across in most interactions. We've had our fair share of borrachos, or drunks. In Mexico City near a square where the Mariachis congregate Mario and I were [View Full Entry]

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The Metro Although we took the Metro to Coyocan to see Frida´s house, the glory of the system did not make its full impact upon me until Mario led Tessa and I to the National Museum of Anthropology, which in itself is very cool, containing giant phallic statues, stone heads, and giant stone boxes full of knives. In the metro, having 1 through 9 or 12 and A through H different lines with intersecting stations, there are people selling anything imaginable. The bravest of these entrepreneurs, enter the trains and sell peanuts, chocolates, discos compactos, and DVD's. (I finally d [View Full Entry]

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Flights in a nut shell The flight from Sacramento to LA was uneventful until we were approaching the tarmac of LAX and were treated to the sight of the illuminated pin point grid that was LA from thousands of feet up, marked by disks of exploding light that were an very U.S. way of celebrating independence. After eating, reading, and generally lounging around terminal 7 for two hours, I decided that it would be wise to take initiative and ask an employee of United why the gate for our flight was not listed. As soon as Tessa uttered that we had [View Full Entry]

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In a few hours time Mario, Tessa, and myself will be on the road, joking with my father as he drives us to Sacramento International Airport. At twenty hundred hours we board a United flight to LAX. Once in lovely Los Angeles there is a four hour layover to look forward to. From there we catch a flight to San Salvador, El Salvador; two hours to wake up, realize we are in Central America, and find the next flight, which theoretically brings us to Mexico D.F. around twelve hundred thirty hours, Mexico City time. Wee. I'll update on the flight experiences [View Full Entry]

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