Back To Puebla We Go

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Today was our last day in Tlaxcala! It was a good one, but still very sad.

One of the first visits was to the convention center. This center was open to the public; funny thing about the center being 'public' is that it wasn't truly public in the sense that if you looked like you didn't belong -aka a group of white people -the security person would stop you and ask a series of questions. After we were given the run down we were able to walk around the center and check it all out. After some impromptu photo's and learning a little bit about Mexico's health care (can we say cray cray?!) we headed over to see the other side of the center

In the 20th century was largely textile factories, as well as storage and housing for the workers. Obviously it is no longer factories and housing, rather, pretty buildings to look at!

The ex-convent that we went to see next was incredible; it was sided along a quiet neighborhood and added uniqueness to it's surroundings.



The ex-convent was gated as many other churches are, and was open to the public.. for the most part. Everyone is welcome past the front gate to take pictures and gawk in awe at the architecture, however, if you would like to walk down the long isle towards the big beauty and actually be able to go inside, there's a price to pay. Upside is that if you had a student ID card with you, it was free! Lucky for me I tend to carry useless crap in my wallet, and wouldn't you know it! Low and behold, my student ID card! I showed the man working there and began what seemed like a 3 minute walk down the isle. I count my lucky stars that it wasn't dark out because although it was beautiful and great, it was eerie walking around by myself in the near dead-silent ex-convent.

Once I got some magazine-worthy pictures of the place I headed back to join the rest of the group.

A short bus ride later we came to our destination! A talavera factory!

Talavera is authentic to Puebla, any talavera made outside of Puebla is not authentic, they even go as far as giving you a certificate verifying that it is authentic. Back in the day and even currently talavera is used as a status symbol, the rich have it and the poor don't. The owner of the factory (an obnoxious Canadian.. he's from Vancouver so that says a lot) gave half of the group a tour and one of the other men running the place gave the other half of us the tour. Luckily I was in the group led by the Mexican worker (incredibly nice!). The tour of the factory/store was very neat to see, there are only 100 workers making and painting the talavera pottery. I would have never guessed there was only 100 workers there; from the pieces of work on display it seemed as if there was more than 100 workers!

Once we finished the tour we took a tour of the shop; holy moses was it ever expensive!! When they say it's a status symbol, it's a status symbol. Let me put this into perspective: Mexico is relatively inexpensive compared to Canada, I could easily live off of $25 a week (the cost of renting a place aside). That being said, if we were in Canada and I saw someone's house covered in talavera tiles and pottery, I would know immediately that they were beyond rich. Looking at the prices of the different items was ridiculous! Even a small espresso and saucer was over $50 CDN. What the hell. I caved and bought the most inexpensive item I could; a mug the cost me $45. Some plates were over $100 each! Pure craziness.

By the time everyone my group had finished looking at the items for sale and buying what we all had wanted we were getting really hungry. Food was our next stop; myself and the few others that were finished walked up toward the indoors food court. It almost looked like a food court... except there were no stores attached to said food court and each vendor in the food court were selling almost exactly the same food items. Alriiighty.

Upon walking in is when the competition began; walking down between the two isles trying to figure out what to eat, what looks good, etc. became increasingly hard to do with the large handful of workers trying to talk over one another to get your attention so you would choose to eat at their place. We quickly decided on a place after becoming overwhelm with the amount of workers trying to grab attention.

The one thing our professor told us to try was this food item called a cemita. A cemita is a humongous sandwich spilling with filling. You can choose the filling (meat) but the toppings were pretty much the same. It's huge, it's messy, it's good. It could feed a family of 3. I definitely took over half of mine back with me. After everyone was done, we paid and then hung around waiting for the rest of the group. While waiting one of the guys had bought a small box of cookies and a smoothie/juice. He shared with the group and oh my gosh, the cookie and the smoothie was soo good! I only had a teeny bit of each because I was still trying to digest from lunch.

We headed back to the hotel around 2:30pm and I definitely needed to chill so my stomach could try to process the insane amount of meat that was just consumed. Instead I started on the assignment, talked with friends and was lazy.

Hours later, Sebastien (the one who has been aiding 2 of the people in our group) invited all of us over to his place to have a drink (coffeee!!) before we went out dancing.

We all got ready and cabbed it over to Sebastien's house. We thought we were only having coffee before we went out, so being seated at the table and having a full on multiple-course meal was quite the surprise! The food was fantastic! Couldn't have been better. We got to eat with Sebastien's family as one huge happy family, we talked and ate and talked some more! One thing I must mention is the coffee; while I'm not a huge coffee drinker, this coffee was beyond compare. The secret? Cinnamon! Love it.

Once we were all nicely full -again -we took a family photo, said our thank you's and goodbye's and headed out!

Although I was full of food, I was too excited about going dancing to care.

We danced the night away, had a ton of fun and came home super tired. Time to shower and head to bed! Tomorrow is going to be a long day!

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