Cholula and Thunderstorms

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Thursday marked nine months together for me and Jorge. We went with his mom to Cholula to visit the city and climb the top of the pyramid to see the church, which we missed last time. The city is cute and very Mexican. We ate lunch there and I had a plate with seasoned chicken, guacamole, pico de gallo, and cactus! Here, you pile bits of all those choices into a warmed tortilla, fold it, and enjoy! The pico de gallo here is not how I make it at home. What I thought were chunks of green pepper were actually chunks of jalapeno! So I had to discard the first taco I made because of that mistake. Yoozah! Everything's soooo spicy!!! 😞 Spicy food makes me angry because it hurts. It makes me angrier when it tastes good but hurts too much to eat - as is the case with chilaquiles. Anyway, I'm including pictures of me trying the cactus. It actually reminded me of a slimy pickle. Not much to my taste.

We later explored the indoor market - where you can see whole chickens hanging by their necks, fresh fish with flies buzzing around, and stands full of ripening fruit. A fun experience. All I wanted was the fruit and I bought like 5 mangos, a tuna (the cactus fruit - this time without the spines), and two guavas. The tuna and the guava were small and full of inedible seeds, so I didn't enjoy those, but the mangos were really ripe and delicioso!

Afterward, Jorge and I climbed to the top of the pyramid to see the church. The view was amazing. I took like 15 pictures from every angle. You can see all the volcanoes, other churches below, including a convent, and what appears to be more pyramids that have yet to be excavated. At the bottom we spent some time looking at what the local vendors had to offer for souvenirs. Jorge bought me a silver ring that has a flower on it, and I bought him a bracelet. I also bought some presents for my family. Everything is so cheap! The "pure silver" ring cost $3, and the bracelet, a dollar.

Yesterday we had a lot of errands to run. Jorge got his hair cut and then we had lunch and I accidentally spilled my beer all over the table and some onto his pants. I ordered a quesadilla and a side of guacamole, but even the guacamole had chunks of jalapeno in it and was really spicy. Can't an American get a break?

Today Jorge's family had a get-together at the end of the street that was kind of like a pot-luck lunch. Guess what... everything was spicy! But there was mole... shredded chicken stewed in chocolate and like 50 other ingredients. It was really good and the least spicy. We also had mango cake, which was delicious. During lunch there was a huge thunderstorm. Luckily, we were under a tent. It's rainy season here and it storms every afternoon so we should have expected it. It sometimes hails too! I saw hail the other day at Jorge's friend's house.

Jorge's sick right now with a cold, the flu - or it could be dengue fever. He got a mosquito bite on Monday and it has a red splotchy rash around it now.. He said he felt like he was gonna faint during lunch so he went back to the house to lie down. He has the sniffles and everything. I hope he's better for tomorrow because we had plans to go to Teotihuacan.

Hopefully my next blog will be describing the trip... And hopefully he feels better as well.. ;0

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Photos

Trying the cactus
(yuck!)

Atop of the pyramid/church
That's a volcano in the background.

That thing needs to be excavated!
But that's just the opinion of one archaeology student.