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Published: September 6th 2006
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Can you tell I'm excited?
I brought the Irish weather with me... And because I have some pictures to post and a couple of you have bothered me about updating, here's some eye candy and the latest from Monterrey.
This past weekend, I headed downtown with an Austrian, an Australian and a Czech.
Oh, good times were had all around and memories were made. We wanted to see some sights, check out some museums, and explore Monterrey a little bit more in depth. We arrived downtown, took some pictures and walked through Macroplaza or la Gran Plaza, in the middle of downtown. It is one of the biggest plazas in the world, with an extension of 400,000 square meters consisting of various monuments, smaller plazas and gardens. I had been there before, but I hadn't walked the entirety of it, which seems more like a serious of parks than one large central plaza. A great place for a picnic on a sunny weekend afternoon.
We grabbed some lunch nearby, then headed to Palacio del Gobierno (the Government Palace) which houses a museum where we learned all about Mexican politics and history from the time Spanish settlers arrived. I had no idea that Nuevo León and Coahuila (another Mexican state) used
to be one state-- Nuevo León y Coahuila, it's inhabitants called Nuevoleocoahuilenses. Yea, try saying that 10 times fast. We stopped at a market in front of the Palacio. Although Monterrey's markets are said to not be so impressive in comparison to the markets you'd find in other places around the country, they had some great things. Scarves, jewelry, food, clothes, everything.
We headed over to the Museo del Obispado, or the bishop's seat. It's located on the top of a big hill/mountain, and there's an amazing view of the entire city all around. See my pictures for the view and the size of the huge Mexican flag.
... In other news: not gonna lie, I keep my weather channel desktop on whenever my computer is on. It's great to see that Monterrey's projected high temps are starting to get into the low/mid 90s (especially when my first week here temps were around 110-120!). Today's high is 87, with rain. It rained yesterday evening, and I'm pretty sure it drizzled all night, but today is the first real IRISH WEATHER day I've had since I arrived. On average, Monterrey gets 8 days of rain in September, which means
Beautiful
Fountain of Life, Catedral Metropolitcano, Faro del Comercio (a huge concrete slab poking out of the ground for several stories), the Sierra Madre mountains in the background... it should cool down quite a bit this month. And by quite a bit I mean maybe we'll stay in the high 80s/low 90s. 😉 This morning I woke up, got ready for salsa class, happily realized I'd need my umbrella, stopped at an internet place and printed off my first of 3 diary/report/essays (monthly partial exam) for my internship and handed it in. I headed over to salsa, and after about 20 minutes, our teacher still hadn't come. I guess no salsa today. I left for home, walking along to James Blunt on my iPod (okay, I know SOME people have a problem with Mr. Blunt, but he really is perfect rainy day music). Although my jeans were soaked up to my knees and I walked about a mile or two (round trip) over to the auditorium, I was pretty content with the rain (see picture).
A few other things: there are lots of holes in the ground. Holes in the sidewalk. Drainage pipe holes, cracks in the cement, uneven pavement/bricks. Due to this fact and the way that people drive in Monterrey, myself and a few friends have come to the conclusion that you're really not in
Monterrey if you don't fear falling into some hole in the ground or getting hit by a car daily. (Oh don't worry it's not so bad, I'm used to it now.) And all you Wisconsin people say that Chicago drivers are nuts. Come to Mexico and we Chicagoans seem pretty tame. Apparently here "STOP" means "please, speed up" and blinkers are used when the driver feels like it. Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way.
Last week our Momias de Guanajuato (mummies of Guanajuato) September/October exhibit opened at the Museo. Soooo creepy. Hundreds of mummies were accidentally preserved, possibly by the sawdust left in the bottoms of their coffins which soaked up the "liquids." Appetizing, huh? The following is an except from an online article I found:
They were literally "dug up" between the years 1896 and 1958 when a local law required relatives to pay a kind of grave tax. You could pay the tax once (170 pesos) and be done with it; this option may have appealed to wealthier individuals. But you were also allowed to pay a yearly fee (20 pesos); this would have appealed to less wealthy families. However, if the relatives could Teatro de la Ciudad
I wanted to climb on this "jungle gym for big kids." not pay this yearly tax for three years, the body (which had, by the way, become accidentally mummified) was dug up from the cemetery and (if the fee still wasn't paid) placed on display in El museo de las momias. Fortunately, in 1958, the law was changed. Although no new bodies have been exhumed, the museum still displays the original mummies.
The mummies began attracting tourists in the early 1900s, "when cemetery workers began charging people a few pesos to enter the ossuary building where bones and mummies were stored. But business really took off after the 1970 movie Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanajuato, starring masked wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta."
The Guanajuato mummies are some of the strangest ones ever placed on display. Some are clothed, some aren't. A few are wearing only their socks and/or shoes. Some are old, others are only infants.
The museum (in Guanajuato) contains a few local legends as well. For example, one body was said to belong to a woman who had been buried alive. When the Mummy Road Show hosts researched the mummy, they concluded that two factors suggested this legend was correct: the woman's arms were raised over
her face and her forehead had scratch marks.
Most of them appear to have marks on their necks from hanging or strangling, but it's actually from the wire or cord that was used to hold them up since the coffins are upright. What's even creepier than seeing these dead people several times a week with their mouths hanging open (their contracting facial muscles caused their mouths to open up and stay that way) are the Angelitos, dead babies whose parents dressed them up as saints and were later preserved, clothing still intact. It's really interesting and speaks to Mexicans' creepy fascination with death. They definitely view death very differently than we Estadounidenses do-- take Dia de los Muertos, for example.
This week at the Museo, I will be putting on a workshop for the guides that give English tours, and I'm looking forward to that. It will be semi-informal, and I'm really looking forward to meeting more of the guides and helping them with their English (and speaking Spanish).
That's all for now, folks. Check out the pics. I'll be heading to Guadalajara in 2 weekends for the Grito de Independencia (Mexico's independence day)!! Hope all is
well with you!
And I leave you with a horribly dumb joke that James the Australian made when we planned on visiting the mummies at the Museum last week: "Did you bring your Mummy with you? Do Mummies get in for free?"
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ChristinJ
Christin Marshall
James' joke actually made me laugh, but maybe it's because I think it's hilarious that he calls his Mom, Mum. Anyway... this makes me sad that I didn't go with ya'll to the Centro that day. In fact, I feel almost animal-like.