More Adventurous

Thursday was Chris' birthday, so Chris, Sean, Kayla, Mariah, Celia, Rachel, Erin and I went to Rachel and Erin's house downtown. Their house is really close to the Zocalo, and own a restaurant which is the bottom front part of their house. It's a huge house, I think about 14 people live there all together. Since it was Chris' birthday,Papa Tomas (the sister's host dad) and mama Linda made us the most incredible food. We had homemade horchata, fresh squeezed orange juice, jugo de tamarindo, homemade tortilla chips and guacamole, squash soup, salad, spanish rice, and pechuga milanesa (very very thin breaded fried chicken). We ate until we were uncomfortably full, then had a tour of the house. It just kept going and going. The dog lives on the roof (which is really common here), where one of the habitants was hanging laundry to dry (the washer and dryer was on the roof, too). The girls have their own room apart from the house, with a balcony overlooking the courtyard with a fountain, lamppost, and children's toys. The house was built around a courtyard that was completely open. There were two kitchens, one upstairs and one down, but apparently the one downstairs is only used for holidays, which is sad because it’s an authentic Mexican kitchen, with some of the biggest pots and pans I’ve ever seen, and the tile stove that you put coals, or whatever heating source in the holes in front. On our way back to the bus stop, I got a watermelon popsicle at this ice cream shop that had every fruit imaginable and every flavor of ice cream you could want.
Friday during the day was probably the most boring day I’ve had yet, here. I didn’t really do anything, just some homework and was restless all day. Friday night, Sean made us “Josh’s feast”, consisting of all of Josh’s uneaten food, (rice, beans, tortillas) since he’s back in the states now. Later that night, a few of us were going out and ran into Regina as we were leaving the gate, so we walked with her through campus to meet her friend, Joslin (Joslyn? Josslinn?) who’s from Germany. We went with them to los Sapos (the popular strip downtown) to meet their friend Emiliano. We went to this really nice place that was an old church, and had a live DJ, but it closed fairly early, so we went looking for something else to do. We couldn’t decide, so we just went back to Emiliano’s apartment which was about 4 blocks away, to hang out. Again, the complex was surrounding a courtyard, where the residents part their cars. He is a really interesting kid, a photographer for Myspace, but a political science major. We left because Chris had a field study trip bright and early in the morning.
Saturday, Dario and I were going to go to either Pachuca, or Tlaxcala, two towns about an hour away from Puebla, each, but he couldn’t go, and I still wanted to, so Sean, Mariah and I went to Tlaxcala. We weren’t really sure where to go, what time the bus would leave, or what to do when we got there, but we just went to the bus station to see what we could do. I asked the clerk what town we should go to today, and he said Pachuca, but I asked him about Tlaxcala, since it’s closer and we left later than I had originally planned. The bus fare was only 16 pesos (about $1), and there was a bus leaving every 10 min. I think we made a good choice. The town was sprawled out on hills, very quaint and European looking. We didn’t do a lot of things of substance, just walked around and saw new things. I really liked it, we went to the biggest market I’ve ever seen, that was next to a really smelly river, when we were trying get back to the bus station we walked up this huge, steep hill, and down the road quite a ways, until we looked across the town and saw a sign for the store across the street from where we got off the bus. Aka-we were really far away from where we needed to be. So we walked back down the hill in attempts to get to the other side of town, and stopped in a store to ask a little old lady for directions. We were in a rush because it looked like a nasty storm was coming really quickly. Walking BACK up the hill again, there was a sand strom-ish. We were wearing our hoods up, sunglasses, and covering our mouths because there was so much sand blowing. The lady told us to just go down the street to the statue and catch the bus from there, which was great advice because otherwise we would have been walking around in the rain. We hopped on the bus and this time it was only 14 pesos.
Sunday, Kayla, Chris, Mariah and I went to Cholula in search of the Carnaval festival that was sopposed to be there, but we didn’t find anything. I did, however, finally see the largest pyramid by volume in the world, which is in Cholula. I didn’t go in because they had all already been, but I’ll go back sometime this semester. It is still buried in dirt/grass, except for the stairs, and the church on the top. Kayla bought a hammock (which she is lying in now), and I found a great store for Talavera. I still haven’t decided what to get yet, maybe a sugar bowl? Since nothing was really going on, we came back to the dorms and met Celia there. We still wanted to do something so we went to the smallest volcano in the world, which is in a tiny town between Puebla and Cholula, called La Libertad. The cab driver said that there was in fact a festival in Cholula, but that we had gone to the wrong center, there are apparently two centers in Cholula.
I had my final exam today for 305. We are taking three Spanish classes in one this semester. So tomorrow begins 306, then in March or so we’ll begin 410. Regina and Joslyn are renting cars to go to Acapulco this weekend and they invited us, so hopefully we’ll get to go!