Weekend Travels

Yesterday, Sean, Mariah and I went to D.F. (Mexico City) to go to Teotihuacan. We left the dorms a little after 7 to catch the bus to the bus station. When we got to the bus station we bought our tickets for the next bus at 8:20, which was perfect because we didn't have to wait but maybe 2 min. The ride there was so, as I've said before, so different. The scenery changes drastically. Sometimes it's the stereotypical Mexican landscape that people think of, dry grass, cacti, shrubbery. Other times it's like your driving through a midwestern American state with rolling farmland, horses, hay, etc. Then at one point, it reminded me of driving through North Carolina or something because the road was cut through a mountain, to to the left and right there was a wall of rock and dark green trees. I saw a few farms with farmers steering cattle and one man was on a roman carriage with a donkey pulling it. However, when we started apporaching the massive city of D.F. (Districto Federal), I saw what looked like Mexican suburbia. Cookie cutter houses made out of cement and painted bright colors, all attached to one another. Then we got more and more into town and then started the above ground subway trains (I don't know the name for them, not metro? not subway? not train?) and really amazing graffiti decorating the entire length of the ride. There was a park extending the entire length of the divided highway (I guess you would call it), with playgrounds and whatnot. When we got to the bus station we bought our ticket to Teotihuacan for 31 pesos ($2.25) and just like any other time we've needed a bus in Mexico, it left right away. We stepped on and it pulled away. Our timing could not have been any better the entire day. I was sitting behind some girls that had an Australian accent so I asked them if they were studying here, but they were in Mexico City "on holiday". They had met this kid from Guadalajara/Mexico City in Oaxaca a few weeks ago and then they facebooked him telling him they were going to be in town so he was there too. He was born and raised in Guadalajara, but now lives in Mexico City for school. So we all started talking a little bit on the ride there. We got in for free for being students in Mexico, which was nice, then headed through a street of vendors to a museum. When we got on the other side of the museum, there was Teotihuacan staring at us in the face. I knew it was a huge place, but I was not expecting it to be the size that it was. It was 2.some miles long. We didn't even get to see the other half of it, we started out going left, towards the pyramid of the moon. There were people selling whistles that sounded like jaguar growls (or people being murdered, according to Mariah), jewelry, blankets, and other items the entire way, kind of had to fend them off. We went through a tunnel from one plaza to the next under a set of stairs. (It's so hard to decribe this, maybe I'll just upload the pictures to photobucket :) Climbing the pyramids is so exhausting, they are massive and the staris are at about a 70 degree angle, and a foot tall each. But getting to the top makes it all worth it. From there, you can see the entire ancient city of Teotihuacan, along with the modern day surrounding of Mexico City. Climbing to the top of the pyramid of the sun (the biggest pyramid in Mexico), was even harder, but we rested in between levels. Sean, (if anyone knows my brother, Isaac, Sean is the closest person I could compare him to) got yelled at for not climbing the stairs, but for climbing the side of the pyramid, like McGuyver. We have some photographic evidence. At the top of the pyramid, I ran into the Aussies and Alejandro (I think was his name) again. It turns out that he knows someone from USC that I had a class with last year and who is best friends with Kathleen from FMLA. It really is a small world. I mean, I don't know this girl well by any means, but I at least know who she is which is crazy to not have any connections at all, just randomly meeting people that know people in other parts of the world. We were all exhausted, and thristy, and starving, so we went back to the bus station, across the street to a restaurant, ate then left. I originally wanted to stay in the city a little longer and go to the national museum of anthropology, and do some other sight seeing, but we were too tired. I'm just going to have to go back. Maybe Luis will come to visit and he can show me around his home town! Who knows? Today I'm going to get my haircut, finally and attempt to make it, yet again, to the pyramids in Cholula which I have been planning on doing for weeks now. Nos vemos.