Bosque Chapultepec

Bosque Chapultepec is a massive park inside the DF. It's a popular family destination - the main part is filled with museums and green spaces, and the secondary area is a theme park. I'd been there once before but didn't have time to do more than just wander in and look at one museum (the Anthropology Museum, whose famed Aztec sunstone is this blog's wallpaper). While my husband was here, we spent a day at Chapultepec, doing a lot more exploring - and, in my case, a lot more sun-burning - than on my previous visit.

One of the great things about Chapultepec is that it's relatively easy to access. Either you can take the Metro to the Chapultepec station or, like us, you can just walk down Paseo de la Reforma.

Reforma, by the way, is also where many of the major foreign embassies are. The American Embassy is on that street as well. You can tell it's the American embassy because of the giant flag outside and because the guards - presumably Americans - are glowering at you. For reference, most of the Mexican guards smile and wave.

One of the valuable life lessons I learned from Chapultepec is that Mexican squirrels are aggressive. Really, really aggressive. So the first picture you see on your left is the squirrel that came running up to us when we walked into Chapultepec. My thought process went something like this: "Oh, cute, a squirrel! And look, it's not even running away - it's posing for us! I think I'll take a picture of the brave squirrel." That's picture number 1.

You'll notice the squirrel is visible only as a puff of tail in picture number 2. That's because at that point the squirrel, which had previously been standing still about two feet from me, suddenly

started charging me. Not casually wandering in my direction, but full on, linebacker, "get out of the way or I'll get you out of the way" bowling towards me. And let me tell you something - being charged by a squirrel is far scarier than it sounds. This is because we expect six-inch-long furry creatures to run away from us - so when they run full tilt toward you, you find yourself thinking, "Exactly how much foam has to be visible on a squirrel's mouth before I can be fairly certain it's rabid?" So, yes, the squirrel is not visible in the second picture because I, a full-grown adult female, was running away from it.

Anyway, our first post-squirrel stop upon entering Chapultepec was the Modern Art Museum. This proved frustrating for several reasons: one, despite the fact that the entire museum was actually inside the park, you had to leave the park gates, wander farther down Reforma, and then enter the museum - which is confusing since that is in no way apparent. The other reason it was frustrating was, bluntly, that I think a lot of modern art is silly. What I did not think silly, though, is the picture below, which is housed in the museum:

That is "The Two Fridas," one of Frida Kahlo's most famous works, and familiar to those of us who saw Frida some years ago.

Post-modern art (hah! see what I did there?) museum, we found our way to the Castillo de Chapultepec. Back in the 19th century the Castillo did in fact house royalty; it's located at the top of the park and commands a really stunning view. If you look carefully, in the picture you can see what appears to be a far-off lake, with kayaks, rowboats, and paddle boats in it. After we visited the Castillo, we went over to the lake and Husband rowed us around for a while. As pleasant as it was to stage a real life version of The Owl and The Pussycat, I was somewhat disappointed. I had wanted to go paddle boating in the swan boat - swan boat! Come on! - but alas, I lost the coin toss. Now, to give you an idea of the size of Chapultepec, we were roughly in the middle of the first section, and the park extends all the way to the office buildings you can see in the distance.

The castle itself - at left - was really lovely. It's also an important Mexican landmark. As I mentioned earlier, it functioned as an actual royal castle for a period. However, before that time (that would be in the 1850s and 1860s, primarily), it was a military school. In 1846/7, the U.S. invaded Mexico as part of the Mexican-American War. The commanders of the school ordered all the students to leave; they were either sent home or to join various army divisions. However, six boys ranging in age from 12 to 19 requested and were granted permission to stay behind and defend the school. The U.S. marines took the hill, and the boys - called the Niños Heroes - died fighting. Their deaths have become wrapped into the celebration of Independence Day (of which more in a future entry) as the origin of the traditional Grito de Dolores which the president gives from the balcony of the Presidential Palace on the night before Independence Day.

The inside of the Castillo is mostly open to tourists (a piece of advice: if you should go to Chapultepec, students - even foreign students - get in to many places free with an ID). It is filled with a history museum - you can see many items of clothing from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as well as several Mexican flags actually carried in the War of Independence, and many stunning murals by Diego Rivera and many many others. The mural you see here is the culmination of a series portraying the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution is generally seen as the rising up of the common man over the elites, particularly landholders and academics.

The first panel of the mural, then, represents the general citizenry being oppressed by the elites; one of the landowners in the foreground is actually holding a scroll that says something to that effect.

The second panel shows the rise of the revolutionary forces, and their peasant support. You can see a peasant being punished; this is a depiction of what led them to support the revolution.

The final panel is the successful revolution, with the people cheering and I believe either Pancho Villa or Benito Juarez in the foreground.

We also went to check out the Chapultepec zoo, where more squirrel hijinks ensued, but more importantly, here is a picture of a monkey, and also a sloth. Because they are fantastic. The Chapultepec zoo also has a giant panda, but he was unwilling to pose, so you're not getting a picture of him.

Street Food Tour

One of the really interesting things we did while my husband was visiting was take a street food tour. Our tour was with Eat Mexico, which I highly recommend. It was a four-hour tour through typical Chilango street food; our tour guide, Natalya, explained that they chose the tour area - Colonia Juarez and the Zona Rosa - in part because it's where a lot of Chilangos themselves eat. I'm going to go through as much as I can remember; unfortunately, we tried so many things that I've forgotten what many of them were!

We started the tour with a traditional Mexican breakfast: tamales and atole. As many of you know, I am slightly tamale-obsessed, so this part wasn't anything new to me, but I have to say they were absolutely delicious. Atole is a Mexican masa (ground corn flour)-based drink, sold in rice and chocolate flavors. We had the chocolate, and I'm definitely a fan. It tasted like a slightly less sweet, thicker version of hot chocolate. In the picture, you can see the vendor putting a tamale into a loaf of bread. This is how many Mexicans eat their tamales; Natalya explained that this is because many people are so poor that this will be nearly the only meal they get all day, and putting the tamale into bread makes it that much more filling, inexpensively. All tamale vendors have pretty much the same basic set-up: several large metal containers on a pushcart/bike. Despite the mobility of their stands, they're generally fairly stationary, returning to the same corner or area pretty much every day. I should mention, too, that I've really come around on the idea of tamales as breakfast food. At home, I'd typically eaten them for lunch or dinner (and for C., who told me that if she knew I liked tamales so much she would have asked her mother for some for me: please please?), but they make a nice breakfast. They're filling but not overly-so, unlike some of the other traditional morning meals, which we'll get to in a minute.

Our next stop was a tortilleria, which is precisely what it sounds like. Tortillas are both a stable of the Mexican diet and really cheap, so everyone buys them fresh from the local tortilleria each day. Having eaten traditional Mexican tortillas, I'm more than a little disappointed in the ones we get in the states - they're nowhere near as good. As you can see in the picture, there's a sort of assembly line process. The tortilla dough is mixed and the tortillas are shaped by hand or using a machine that kind of looks like an overly-large pasta press (and follows the same basic logic). Then they're dropped onto the conveyor belt over what is essentially a stove, until they're cooked. At the end of the belt you can see the reject tortillas. The owner introduced us to what Natalya called the Mexican equivalent of a pacifier: a warm tortilla, sprinkled with salt, and then rolled into a tube. Apparently Mexican parents give these to their children to keep them quiet prior to meals, among other things. It's delicious - I've now begun doing this with all the tortillas I'm served at restaurants.

Our next stop was for quesadillas. Mexican quesadillas are generally not what we think of as quesadillas in the states. Rather than two tortillas with filling, it's one tortilla in an oval shape (that's actually the definition of a quesadilla here - an oval tortilla), with the same basic filling options as a taco. Ours came with beans, cheese, and nopales - cactus leaves, which I've discovered I like when they come from a can or jar, but not so much fresh. Fresh nopales have a gooey coating, rather like okra, that I don't enjoy. The canned or jarred variety, which is what you get in most taco joints and street stands, doesn't have that coating. And, like everything else in Mexico, quesadillas are improved by salsa. The standard Mexican red salsa - spicy but delicious - seems to be made from the chili de arbol, or tree chili. Green sauces are often, though not always, habaneros, and generally less spicy.

Following the quesadillas, we had tacos de canasta, or basket tacos - so called because they're made in the mornings, partially steamed, and then put in a basket lined with plastic bags to finish steaming. They're sold from the basket, and are generally not good after about 3 p.m., because they're over-steamed by then. Most tacos de canasta are sold by men on bikes, with the basket in the front; ours, somewhat unusually, were from a street stand, La Abuela, which is well-known in the DF. La Abuela has even been featured in a couple of magazines here, and looking at the vendor - that would be El Abuelo ('grandfather'; his wife is the titular Abuela, who makes all the tacos) - can you blame them? This man is the absolute epitome of grandfatherly-ness. Anyway, we had the cochinita pibil taco, which is a type of marinated pork and quite good.

Next up is what might be my very favorite part of the tour - the Mexican take on fruit cups! This is a large plastic cup of cut-up fruit, usually mango and papaya, though most of the vendors have a couple other options as well. They cut the fruit up into bite-size chunks, then sprinkle it with chili powder (there is chili in some form in just about everything I've eaten here, with the exception of smoothies - and I'm certain that's an option if you want it), salt, and fresh-squeezed lime juice. It's amazing; since the tour, I've had this probably four times, because I'm basically obsessed with it now. The liquid that forms in the bottom is also delicious; according to Natalya, many people buy the fruit for that liquid alone.

We also had a squash flower burrito. Burritos are actually relatively rare in Mexico City; they're not really a food from central Mexico. This is still the only burrito stand I've seen here. Squash flowers, however, are quite common here, and very delicious when mixed with cheese and salsa.

Now, I've left out quite a few of the stops on our street food tour - for instance, I don't have pictures from the taco de pastor stand, which is basically a Mexican take on the ubiquitous Arab and/or Turkish kebab joints. Back in about the 1970s, a sizable Lebanese contingent came to Mexico City, fleeing political unrest in Lebanon (fun fact: my landlord is part of that contingent). Among other things, they brought the concept of a bunch of meat shoved on a vertical spit and roasted over the course of the day. In Lebanon, this was served in a pita - I've had a few myself. In Mexico, naturally, it comes in a tortilla. They also put a pineapple on top of the spit, for sweetness. Many taco joints have a de pastor set-up facing the street. Anyway, like I said, I don't have pictures of that, or the orange-carrot juice we had, or what I'm pretty sure were at least three more kinds of tacos. But I'm going to leave you with one more very Mexican consumable, though not from the tour:

This is tequila and sangrita. Tequila in Mexico is a sipping drink, not a shooting drink. I've actually never had straight tequila before - I'm a margarita drinker myself - but I found the alcohol itself decent, but not terribly exciting. What I did find exciting, though, was the sangrita. This is something vaguely akin to Bloody Mary mix but with far less tomato (and possibly using clamato juice instead; I chose not to inquire too closely on that front). It is, naturally, spicy. It's delicious, and cuts the kick of the tequila nicely. As it was explained to me, the proper way to drink sangrita and tequila is to take a sip first of the tequila, then of the sangrita. It's possible I've got that slightly wrong, since it was explained to me by my taxi driver, while driving, and I could have sworn he was describing actually drinking out of a hollowed-out tomato (which would be awesome, by the way), so I experimented with the order. And I'm not sure whether it matters whether the sangrita is first or second, but it's definitely good. I do think (this may be heretical) that it would be better to mix the sangrita and tequila, and may experiment with this once I'm back home. Or, alternately, I might skip the tequila entirely and just drink the sangrita - I'm that kind of person.

Xochimilco

Ok, part one of the long-delayed updates is on Xochimilco. Xochimilco is a canal area on the outskirts of the DF. Many Chilango families go there on the weekends, as do the tourists. The prime attraction are the canals themselves. They actually originate in Aztec times - the Aztecs constructed the canals to grow particular flowers and crops. Although the canals are mostly for pleasure boats now, some remnant of that agricultural use remains in the many flower shops lining the canal paths.

Mexican gondolas are different from (my possibly incorrect understanding of) Venician ones, in that they look like this:

It's a grey day, and my picture isn't the greatest, but all the gondolas are neon. They also have giant headboards painted like Aztec-styled mouths, which are interesting to climb into. You can choose from a variety of gondola trips, ranging from 30 minutes to 6 hours or more. We opted for an hour-long ride (as a sidenote: although it's true that Mexicans don't really engage in bargaining anymore, there are no posted prices for gondola rides, which means that if you repeatedly say the price you've been quoted is too expensive and actually begin to walk away from the embarcation point, you can take a substantial chunk off of the cost. In our case, we started at 450 pesos - about $45 US - and went down to 300).

Your gondola tour will be accompanied by floating mariachi bands as well as vendors selling meals and snacks. These are also priced for tourists and captive audiences, meaning that they are three times as expensive as the same meal would be in the city. However, there is something very satisfying about sharing tacos on the canals, while your husband quacks at the ducks.

Other than the canals, Xochimilco's main attraction is a truly massive market. There are easily hundreds of stands, some out front covered by tarps and others inside a huge building. For those who have been to Israel, this was extremely reminiscent of the shuq in the Old City. Although we wandered the market for a bit, we were completely out of money at that point and so didn't buy anything - which is a shame, because I haven't seen spice stands at a market before, and this one sold a powdered mole which would have been interesting to try.

From my perspective, one of the really nice things about Xochimilco is that it was easy to get there. We took the metro and then the light rail; it was about a 45-minute trip, and then an easy ten minute or so walk to the embarcaderos (the embarkation points).

On our way to the metro in the DF, we stopped at the Monumento a la Revolución:

The Monumento a la Revolución is actually the cupola of what was originally intended to be the presidential palace. It was started in the early 1900s,

but construction was halted by the revolution of 1917. Eventually the presidential palace was moved to a different area, but the cupola was left in place and has become a major rallying point for Mexican political events. At least twice since I've been here, political rallies have been held at the monument, and it's not unusual to see a large crowd there. During our trip, a few days before Independence Day, it was actually very quiet. By the way, those pillars out front have the names of Mexican towns and states carved into them.

When we went to check out the monument, we discovered that you could actually take a glass elevator all the way up to near the top of the cupola and wander around. The view was quite impressive:

You could see all the way to the mountains in the distance, something that is relatively rare in the central part of the DF both because it's very built up and because of the pollution. Sadly not shown in this picture are the buildings dressed up for Independence Day. Although Independence Day is September 16, the decorations are broken out starting September 1. All political and governmental buildings, as well as many hotels and businesses, are draped with huge red/white/green banners, and even little corner stores put up mock-ups of the Mexican seal. Cars and bikes also mount Mexican flags - some small, some full-size - wherever they can.
More on Independence Day in coming posts, but for now it's enough to say that Xochimilco and the Monumento de la Revolución were great fun!

Lots of good stuff coming, I promise!

Oh, I didn't mean to get this far behind on the blog, and I'm too busy with dissertation stuff right now to do a real update - but I haven't forgotten it! There's lots to tell. My husband came to visit for a week, so I have many stories, including:

- A trip to Xochimilco, which is a canal town on the edge of the D.F., where we rode in a Mexican gondola (What's the difference between Mexican and Italian gondolas? Hint: it's in the color scheme).

- A day at Chapultepec, the huge park, with a visit to a modern art museum, a castle, a zoo, and a lake where I'm pretty sure I spotted a crane.

- Independence Day! Complete with the traditional Grito de Dolores, fireworks, and a military parade. The military brought eagles, which was probably the high point of the event for me.

- A street food tour

- Me running away from a squirrel

- And much, much more! All that coming as soon as I get a handle on my dissertation work.

Vamos! Se puede!

I was woken up around 6 a.m. this morning by the sound of helicopters, followed shortly by a marching band. My first thought was that I was home in my neighborhood in Ohio, where we're on the airport flight path every couple of weeks (though not, mercifully, at 6 a.m.). My second thought was that there had been some crime near me, and I was hearing a police chopper. Neither idea explained the marching
band, and both were wrong, as I discovered when I checked the paper. What I heard was the start of the Mexico City International Marathon, which - since I'm near a major intersection - started near me.The marathon was a particularly Mexican experience; I'd like to use a photograph t

o illustrate why that is.

I decided to use my day off to check out the Museo de Bellas Artes (more on that in a second) and happened to be walking down the marathon route for a bit. The picture at left is of Reforma, which I think I mentioned here previously shuts down to cars on Sundays to create bike lanes. The marathon route really embodied the Chilango spirit. Reforma is a la

rge road; it has about four lanes running each direction, plus what is essentially a service road on each side. In my hometown, when there's a marathon they shut down the street to all traffic - runners only. Here, as you can see, the runners got four lanes - that's the center bit - traffic got four lanes, and the bikers/walkers/normal Sunday exercisers got the service road. This fits so perfectly with the Chilango tendency to make the most possible u

se out of the smallest possible space: no area is wasted.

As I continued walking along the marathon route, I eventually came on this site:

That is a group of people - spontaneously, as far as I can tell - doing a choreographed exercise/dance to the tune of "Natural Woman," which, in case you're wondering, is awesome. I was walking through Parque Juarez and found these people dancing, with plenty more hanging around watching them. It's hard to see from this picture, but the tent there says "Muévete" - move yourself - and the woman teaching the dance (whose shoulder you can just see in the middle of the photo; sorry, it's not a very good picture) was presumably employed by the government to do just this. This little spontaneous dance class looks like part of the government's efforts to encourage exercise in the DF.

I continued walking through Parque Juarez, finding all sorts of little stands set up selling jewelry, clothes, and other trinkets. Eventually I made it to the Museo de Bellas Artes - that's the Fine Arts Museum, by the way - and discovered that apparently there was an opera going on. The Palacio de Bellas Artes, which houses the museum, was originally designed as a concert hall in the mid-18th century, and only converted to an art museum in the 1930s. I was not able to attend the opera, as it required a purchased ticket, but the rest of the Palacio was pretty spectacular. I wish I had pictures to share, but they weren't permitted. The entire building is art deco, top to bottom - but it's Mexican art deco, which means you have art deco-style Aztec stone heads. The collection was made up of murals by famous artists like Diego Rivera, very striking. I spent a happy hour or so wandering around (it's kind of a small collection; when one piece takes up an entire wall, you can only have so many per floor), and then probably another hour and a half wandering through the enormous street market that was set up in Parque Juarez while I checked out the museum. I bought a couple small items, for myself and others (who have been known to read this blog, so my lips are sealed) but mostly just gawked happily. There were also street foods I'd never seen before; I didn't get around to trying any of them this time, but I hope to do so in the near future and report back! All in all, a lovely morning/afternoon.

Polanco

Because the whole point of my being in Mexico is to do research for my dissertation, I haven't done nearly as much exploring as I'd like. For the past several weekends I've started trying to rectify that and see more of the city.

Areas of Mexico City are distinctly defined - every area you go into is part of a colonia, which is kind of like a neighborhood (the best comparisons are probably the way that we talk about Soho in New York, Uptown in Minneapolis, or the Short North in Columbus). As opposed to American neighborhoods, though, the colonias are very formalized - every area is part of a colonia, and if you look at a street sign it will have the colonia and delegacion (kind of like district or county) listed on it in addition to the street name. My colonia, Tabacalera, is very small - I'm actually kind of sandwiched between two much larger colonias, the Centro Historico and Juarez. Tabacalera is essentially corporate - as I may have mentioned before, the Senate and police headquarters are just around the corner, and a major business hotel area is less than a five minute walk away. It's an ideal place for someone who wants to spend her time working and doesn't want a lot of bars and noise at night, but it's a little bit lacking in the excitement category.

In order to find some excitement, this past weekend I went to a colonia called Polanco - and I have to say, until I got there I don't think I'd realized just how diverse Mexico City is, at least economically. Polanco is a very wealthy part of the city, and that was evident as soon as I got there. Most of the stores and restaurants I've seen up until now have pretty much been housed in overgrown closets; even the grocery store by me, while a good size for a store here, is probably a third the size of grocery stores back home. Restaurants in particular are often squeezed into what looks to be about an 8x20 feet - and if you could the food stalls on the street, you're talking more like 4x6. In essence, space is at a premium. This is all I've seen for the past month.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got to Polanco on Saturday and found myself surrounded by stores the size of houses - and not a little house either. We're talking full-on, colonial gabled houses here. These were the kind of stores where they have 1500 square feet and three items on display. These were, in short, the designer stores. In my scruffy jeans and beat-up sneakers, I couldn't even get up the courage to go in - I was certain they'd just throw me out! And tucked between the designer stores were the Mercedes and Audi dealerships. It was basically like walking down Fifth Avenue in New York, except with far less traffic and more poorly-paved sidewalks (sidenote: I'm not sure what Mexicans have against sidewalk repair, but it is a distinctly low priority. Also, if I don't stare at the ground at least 90% of the time, I WILL trip).

The other thing Polanco has that I had trouble finding elsewhere is knitting shops. That was actually my destination - I wanted to pick up some yarn and needles for a project I'd decided to start. The yarn shop was in a little shopping area called Pasaje Polanco, and I have to say, it was absolutely lovely. Pasaje Polanco is a little enclosed courtyard area filled with boutiques and small shops, as well as a few restaurants and a Starbucks. I picked up a drink, planted myself at a table outside the Starbucks, and proceeded to sit and read for about 45 minutes. It took about 15 of those minutes before I realized what seemed so strange to me about where I was. See, the one absolute constant in my life for the last month has been traffic noise. Mexico City is immensely busy, with lots of drivers, lots of traffic, and - naturally - lots and lots of car horns. My apartment's windows face on a fairly busy road, so even when I'm not out and about I hear cars pretty much all the time. But sitting at the Starbucks there, I didn't hear a thing. In that nice little courtyard it was quiet except for the sounds of people chatting and children playing, and I have to say, it was really lovely.

The other detail about Polanco is that there's a substantial immigrant population there. A lot of Mexican Jews - around here, that mostly means Sephardic Jews with roots in Western Europe, Syria and Lebanon - live in that area, as well as other transplanted foreigners. Because of that, there are stores and restaurants in the area that are decidedly familiar. I had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen (I can't tell you how happy I was to see a salad), which was next door to Teavana, and so forth. It was a lovely morning/afternoon, and the fact that I was able to walk back to my apartment fairly easily - it's probably three or four miles by the most direct route - was a definite plus. I've now explored most of the colonias that were particularly interesting to me; I have to figure out where to go next!

I feel like I should just rename this blog "My adventures with food"

I promise to stop talking about food so much at some point. It's just that one of the most exciting parts of traveling to new places, for me, has always been trying new things. And here there are so many new things! However, if anyone out there is actually reading this (really: it's entirely possible I'm writing just for myself), let me know if there's something non-food-related you'd like to hear about.

On a food note... one of the (food) things I was most excited about before I came was the supposed easy access to tamales. I've had a long-lasting love affair with tamales, ever since a professor in college invited the class over to his house for dinner and his Colombian wife made tamales from scratch. The ones I've found in the states have been of varying qualities - the first time I tried them in a Mexican restaurant we like, they were good - but the next time, not so much. Ditto with buying them frozen from Trader Joe's. So prior to actually coming to Mexico, my plan was to basically live on tamales (and empanadas, but that's a story for another time). So you can imagine my disappointment when I couldn't find them anywhere! Restaurants didn't have them, street stalls only sold tacos... this was indeed a crushing blow. Then yesterday, I took a different route to my office* - and discovered that I'd been looking in the wrong place the whole time! See, I figured out a week or so ago that tamales are considered breakfast food here. This is really no stranger than having tacos for breakfast, which is also common here but still weird to me. Mexicans eat really heavy breakfasts, something my body just can't handle. Anyway, I found a whole bunch of street carts selling tamales. Now, street carts are the one form of Mexican street food I hadn't yet tried. Unlike the stalls, which are permanent little shacks made out of aluminum, the carts are mobile - it's often one person with a little folding table and a bunch of stuff piled on said table, though I've also seen at least one instance where the guy converted the back row of seats in his station wagon into a grill and was cooking/selling that way. Street carts are probably the easiest way to get into trouble with your food here, because they're mobile. With the shacks, since they're in the same place every day, they've got a fairly consistent clientele - which translates to an incentive not to give them food poisoning. The carts, however, don't necessarily have that since they can change locations so easily. So in my quest for tamales, I scouted out vendors who are in the same place day to day and then worked out who was actually selling tamales. And today I finally screwed up my courage (which is a lot easier to do here than at home, since everyone's so nice) and bought a tamale!

The man selling them had the kind of tamales that we're used to at home - beef and pork - but he also had sweet tamales. As previously mentioned, a) I don't like protein heavy breakfasts and b) I like trying new things. So I ended up with a sweet tamale, which upon opening I discovered was hot pink. Instead of filled tamales (which I really like, but again, too much protein), this was masa - corn flour - through and through, with what I assume was sugar mixed in. The hot pink color was unexpected, but the tamale itself was really pretty good. Tomorrow maybe I'll see if my stomach can handle a pork tamale, which would make me very happy. I just wish they were available at times other than breakfast!

*Starbucks

In the land of Wal-Mart

This weekend, I decided it was time to conquer my fear of mass transit, so I set out to learn how to use the Metrobus. The Metrobus is sort of line an above-ground subway; it runs a set route, up and down a main avenue. There were some hiccups: the Metrobus picks up riders in a raised median lane in the middle of a busy road, and I didn't realize the entrance was on the opposite end of the road from me - which meant I was wandering IN the median lane while a bus was barreling down on me. Then I couldn't figure out how to work the ticket machine, and almost lost 50 pesos until a traffic cop took pity on me and showed me how to use the stupid thing (side note: machines that require you to put in money, then take a card out, then reinsert that card in a different slot in order to actually have your money stored on it, but don't actually tell you any of these things in the display area, are stupid). Anyway, after I managed all of that, actually riding the Metrobus was a snap. There was a designated women/elderly area, which was actually kind of nice: harassment is so incredibly prevalent around here that during rush hour that separate area must be a real gift. However, when I was on the bus it was largely empty. I took it about three miles south, to an area called La Condesa.

La Condesa is a very up-and-coming area, with lots of nice cafes and shops and green spaces (although this is Mexico, so most of those green spaces have homeless people in them and smell strongly of garbage). I managed to arrive right around the busiest time of the morning, as people were having breakfast - about 10, here - so was not able to go to a fantastic little bakery I'd found there. I did, however, have a nice breakfast at a coffee shop and then set out for some exploring - which is where my title comes in.

It turns out that, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of grocery stores in Mexico City are owned by Wal-Mart. The one nearest me certainly is, and while it is suitable for basic needs it is lacking a certain something in terms of variety, or what we might call "the more unusual stuff I prefer to eat." So imagine my surprise when I found a much nicer, larger grocery store in La Condesa with a much more interesting supply of foodstuffs - and then, looking at the store brand, realized it too was owned by Wal-Mart! The most exciting thing at my local grocery store is granola; this one had hummus and salted pumpkin seeds and - most interesting of all - lebneh. I find this interesting because lebneh is an Israeli dairy product, sort of a (delicious) cross between yogurt and sour cream. Given that La Condesa isn't the area around here known for its Jewish population (that would be Polanco, which I have yet to explore), I was very surprised to find lebneh there. I would, however, like to point out that Mexican lebneh varies from Israeli lebneh in one key way: while Israeli lebneh is generally plain, so that the primary flavor is the lebneh itself, the Mexicans brought in a very special ingredient - chipotle flavoring. Ok, if I'm being fair, they had plain lebneh too - but how could I turn down the chipotle one?

The other thing I found in La Condesa, which was also exciting, was a cute little brightly colored straw handbag sold by two guys on the street. What was fun about this - and something I really like about Mexico - is that even though it was a street-corner vendor, the bag was hand-made. I could tell, because they were busy making more of them while I watched. And that's the way it is around here: all the things we think of as touristy "Made in China"-type products are actually handmade. It's kind of like living in a giant Etsy store, and I'm looking forward to figuring out just how much of this stuff I can manage to buy and bring home with me.

I have a very selective command of Spanish

Ever since I got here, I've been struggling with Spanish. This is the same kind of experience I have every time I go someplace where I actually need to use my language skills: for the first few days I'm in the honeymoon phase, where I feel like everyone understands me and I can understand everything I need to. Then all of a sudden it's like my comprehension plummets - I can't understand anyone anymore, and I'm incapable of forming a basic sentence without a dozen mistakes. One of the best examples of this so far came towards the middle of the first week I was here, when there was a massive hail storm. The apartment I was staying in then (they moved me to a nicer one a few days later) had an air conditioner in the wall - but it wasn't sealed, it was just placed in the wall. When this hail storm hit, the hailstones - and the torrential rain that accompanied them - came into the room around the air conditioner. I ran down to the office to beg for more towels to try to stop what was beginning to look like a very localized flood, but in my haste to explain the situation I used the wrong verb. "Llover" means "to rain" in Spanish; "llorar" means "to cry." Guess which one I used.

Anyway, I'm telling this story to explain my amusement today when I realized that it's not that I can't speak Spanish - I just can't have normal conversations. I struggle to read a menu or to explain that I believe my showerhead is clogged, but I have no trouble whatsoever having detailed conversations about more intellectual issues. Today as I was traveling to a meeting I had an extensive conversation with my cab driver about the Mexican political system, compared and contrasted with the U.S. system and with complete explanations on both of our sides as to what problems we felt each system faced (Mexicans are, not surprisingly, very cognizant of American politics. They have to be, because the decisions taken in the U.S. have major ramifications here). Then as I was returning from the meeting, I had a very detailed conversation with that cab driver about racism here and in the U.S., complete with causes and explanations for variation. So apparently I can speak Spanish, so long as it's not about anything practical.

Speaking of not being able to discuss practical things, I am continuing my quest to eat as many things I could not previously identify as possible. On that note, this is a fruit called a granada china, or golden pomegranate. It is named after, but I think not actually related to, a pomegranate. It reminds me more of its other namesake, however - a grenade.

The granada china is an unexpected fruit. It has a very hard outer shell, almost like an egg - it actually makes a cracking sound when you open it. Inside is a hollow space filled with goop-encased seeds. You're supposed to eat both goop

and seeds; apparently you can tell a

granada china is ripe when you shake it and hear the innards rattle around loosely. This is not at all appealing to look at, and the texture admittedly leaves something to be desired. In fact, texturally it's a little like eating mucous. Flavorwise, however, it's great. It has a sweet flavor, vaguely like a melon, and the seeds provide a nice little crunch. I liked this a lot more than the mamey I tried earlier in the week, but I'm not sure whether I can get over the texture enough to try it again.

On the plus side, I seem to be able to eat the majority of produce here without trouble - yesterday I bought a sandwich with lettuce in it, which was extremely exciting since I haven't had lettuce since I got here, and didn't have any problems. This means that when I go back to my buddy the fruit guy at the market this weekend I plan to buy some of the absolutely gorgeous cherries he always has piled up there. Happy weekend!

This lollipop has menthol in it

I take back everything I said about the Halls lollipop being non-mentholated. It absolutely had menthol in it; not as much as a cough drop, but enough that I thought it was pretty gross. It also had a liquid filling that was ostensibly caramel, but really just tasted like more menthol.

In lieu of discussing the wisdom of creating menthol-flavored candy, I'm going to jump in to 'fruits I don't recognize.' Today's entry into that category is the mamey.

The mamey is a fruit native to Mexico. Its full name is the mamey sapote; however, it is apparently unrelated to several other sapotes with the same name, such as the black sapote (also known as 'the fruit that is so acrid when unripe it is used as a fish poison in the Philippines, which I wish we'd known before we tried to eat one'). As you can see from the pictures above, it looks sort of vaguely like a sweet potato with a really big pit. Texture-wise, it actually reminded me of a slightly undercooked sweet potato - it was kind of fibrous and slightly hard. The flavor was vaguely reminiscent of passion fruit, but not as sweet, and it had a slight smell to it of something that had gone a bit off. Since the fruit seller I bought it from was adamant that it would be ripe yesterday, I assume that that off-ness is actually a characteristic of the fruit. I didn't like it very much in fruit form; however, I tried it last week in a pudding, and it was somewhat nicer then. It's also commonly made into drinks - they make pretty much every fruit you can think of into a drink here, which is pretty great - so that might change the flavor as well.

I feel like in all this food talk I'm giving the impression that all I do is waddle from place to place eating. And while that may not be entirely inaccurate, the waddling from place to place raises an important aspect of Mexican life: traffic laws. Traffic laws here appear to be not so much laws as suggestions, really - "you might want to stop driving/walking now, but we can't swear to it." Being a pedestrian here is an extremely unusual experience. Every corner has a walk light, but the relationship between the walk light and the point at which you actually cross the street appears to be largely random. Red lights here seem to function a lot like yellow lights at home - they mainly mean that it's time to speed up to get through the intersection. So just because the light is red and your walk signal is green, you can't assume it's actually time to walk. Nor, under the same circumstances, can you assume that you will not have traffic coming at you from at least three other directions - and if there's anything I've learned about Mexico City drivers, it's that they do not stop or even slow down for pedestrians.

Then there are left turns and u-turns. If you are a driver and you want to make a turn, you don't actually use a turn lane, or go to the nearest light and turn around there. No, you pull into what you hope is a car-sized cutout between your lane of traffic and the oncoming traffic, park yourself at a 90 degree angle to all the other cars, and then - pretty much whenever you feel like - turn into the oncoming traffic. There may or may not be space for your car at that point, but you're taking it anyway. I'm becoming convinced that the more or less constant car horns have more to do with this particularly creative technique for turns than they do anything else.

Product Variation: Mexico vs. US

One of my favorite things about traveling to different countries is always the food, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about some of what I've found here. First, an unexpected find at the grocery store today: a lollipop!

Well, it wasn't the lollipop itself that was the surprise - it was the brand. As you can see from the picture there, that is a Halls brand lollipop. The same Halls that we associate with those (gross) menthol cough drops in the U.S. is a candy maker here. I have not yet tried the lollipop, but based on the package it does not appear to contain any menthol.

This is something I've seen more than once, though. Often companies that sell one product in one market sell a different product in another market. It's usually something related - for instance, it makes a lot of sense that a cough drop maker would sell candy, since cough drops are really just medicated candy. I know I've seen at least one other instance of product variation since I got here, but I can't think what it is just now - if it comes to me, I'll let you know.

There are other, equally unexpected kinds of product variations though, that have to do with eating habits and taste preferences. For instance, Yoplait sells its yogurt here as well - but in addition to the normal, say, peach yogurt you can buy at home, the company also sells a yogurt with cereal grains and nuts mixed in. At home, those add-ins are generally sold separately; here, it's already all mixed together. It's not bad, but for someone who's not used to it, it's a bit odd having a spoonful of yogurt and biting a walnut.

One of the most exciting things to me about being here is the fruit. There's an enormous variety of fruit here. Some of it is what we have at home - apples, bananas, and interestingly strawberries imported from California. Others are more exotic but still somewhat familiar, and still others are things I've never heard of before. I'm working my way through those latter two categories, starting with a fruit that I've had before but still falls into the 'exotic' category: the lychee.

In the first few days I was here, I saw a man selling rambutan - a close, more hirsute cousin of the lychee - from a wheelbarrow on the side of one of the main roads. This surprised me, because I usually think of lychees and rambutan as a very Asian fruit. It turns out there's a reason for this, though. Remember back to high school history, when we all learned that Christopher Columbus found the New World because he was looking for a better trade route? Well, you're looking at the fruits (literally) of that trade route. Mexico became a fairly common trading point for goods from the Philippines, and Filipino fruits - notably lychee, rambutan, and the mango - flourished in Mexico's heat and humidity. So these fruits originally of very foreign origin have ended becoming a fairly significant domestic product.

This is a half-peeled lychee. The red skin on the outside is very rough, almost pebbly, and fairly thick. Inside is a fruit with the consistency of a peeled grape, although with a large stone in the middle. They taste vaguely grape-like as well, although somewhat sweeter. Since I'm hesitant to eat grapes here - I'm still not entirely certain whether I can eat unpeeled fruit without getting sick - the lychees and rambutan have been a nice semi-substitute for me. They take a lot more work though - I have to rinse them, then get through the tough shell and peel them - and I'm impatient, so I haven't had more than a few at a sitting. When I am willing to put the work in, however, it's a nice treat!

Rubber Gasket Avenue

I want to talk about the way Mexico City is laid out, but first: this!

This was the site that greeted me as I was walking back from the market this morning. I began to suspect something was up when I woke up to what sounded like gun shots (I'm still not sure what they were) and rather more traffic than usual. Then, as I was coming back from the market, I found the streets completely packed. Lines of buses were parked on both sides of the streets, and people were walking in packs of thirty or more. They had flags that said 'Leonel Luna,' which meant - yes! I saw my first rally today!

I'm a political scientist, so of course political life is exciting to me. A little bit of background (quickly, I promise). Mexico is a multi-party system. From 1929 to 2000 it was ruled by the PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party), which is a center-left party whose credentials are linked to the revolution that created the new state in 1917. The PRI lost the presidency in 2000, when it was replaced by the PAN (National Action Party), a center-right party. Now, one of the catalysts for that loss was the rise of a third party, the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution). So Luna is a high-level delegate for the PRD in the Mexico City government - and that high-level status apparently translated into the ability to shut down some major sections of the city today to hold a rally. You may remember my mentioning the Plaza de la Revolución in my last post; that's where the rally was held. The noise and crowd was quite impressive - you could hear them from blocks and blocks away.

That wasn't what I meant to talk about, though - I just thought it was cool. What I really wanted to talk about was the way streets are laid out here, and (very related) how Mexicans actually fix things.

The layout of Mexico City is on a similar model to a lot of European cities, and (I have it on good authority) some Asian ones as well - really, it's a layout associated with older areas. Basically, many streets are set up so that all the shops are selling similar things. This means that, for instance, when I walk to the market I walk through a solid block of shops selling hubcaps, followed by a block of stores selling what appear to be gaskets. What becomes really clear, though, when you walk through these areas is that - unlike Americans - Mexicans actually repair their appliances, cars, and whatever else they can. This becomes very obvious when you walk through the streets here and see tons of original VW Beetles, apparently in good shape.

It's really nice to see a place where things are repaired rather than thrown out, even if the likely explanation is that buying new is prohibitively expensive. Repairing old appliances creates less waste, which is good for the environment - although I will admit that whatever gain is made there is likely offset by the smog!

¿Le gusta México?

I take a cab to and from the buildings where I'm doing research, because they're not in the greatest areas. I've gotten relatively adept at calling for a cab, which was its own challenge for a bit, and I can almost always find the ones that are waiting for me. Taking a cab so often, however, means I have the following conversation pretty much twice every day:

Driver: "Where are you from?"

Me: "The United States."

Driver: "How long are you here for?"

Me: "Three months, I think."

Driver: "Do you like Mexico?"

Me: "Yes, I think it's lovely!"

Driver: "Oh - you speak Spanish very well!"

This exchange is followed by the driver giving me some sort of impromptu tour of our route, showing off different things about the city. I take roughly the same route every day, yet I've never been given the same tour. That's another thing I like about Mexico - everyone here is very proud of their city, and very proud of different things about it. For instance, a few days ago as we were heading back to my apartment my driver showed me a plaza where demonstrations were taking place. In the middle of this plaza is a giant arch, easily 50 feet high, and incredibly imposing - all tan and black brick, in a huge empty space. He asked if I knew what it was, which I did not.

"That's the Plaza de la Revolución. You know why? Because they were going to build the Palacio Nacional there [the official presidential building], but they only got through the what was going to be the main area, and then they had to stop and build it in a different place." For some reason - it's not entirely clear why - rather than building the Palacio there, they moved it to what is now known as the historic district. I have to say, having seen the real one, that they made the wrong choice - the arch in the plaza is much prettier. Anyway, this particular driver was very proud of the history of political activism in Mexico, something that remains to this day. Even under the PRI, Mexicans participated in a surprising level of political activity. Most governments like the PRI would tend to repress activism, out of concerns that it would lead to support for the opposition. The PRI certainly did that to some extent, but it also permitted a lot of activism, especially at the local level - partly to prevent dissension from boiling over into revolution, but also because it was a useful measure of what people were actually thinking.

But not everyone is proud of the same things here. Today's driver, going along almost exactly the same route, had something else he was very proud of to point out to me - the security cameras lining Paseo de la Reforma. Reforma is a major street going throughout the D.F., and as my driver pointed out to me, one of the things that recent governments have done is install tons and tons of security cameras along the avenue. Many of them are up high at intersections, intended to catch car accidents - but quite a few are lower down and intended, according to my driver, to protect bikers and joggers. These lower cameras are attached to security buttons that you can push if there's an emergency, and the police will come right away. My driver was very proud of this - he felt Mexico City has an undeservedly bad reputation, and that this might go some way towards proving that it's really pretty safe here.

I've really enjoyed hearing all the different things people are proud of here. It's an incredibly diverse city, and the people - especially the cabbies - are no less so!

D.F. stands for delightful food

I'm a grad student working on my dissertation in Mexico City. I'll be here for three months, and I've decided I need a format in which to share all of the fantastic things I'm discovering about this city.

The majority of Americans who travel to Mexico (and many don't, these days) head to the resort areas - Cancun and Acapulco. I'm guilty of that myself; I traveled to Tulum, south of Cancun, for my honeymoon. And while that was lovely, I'm swiftly concluding that people who don't come to Mexico City are missing out on quite a lot.

Mexico City is located in about the southern third of the state, up in the mountains. This makes it an incredibly temperate climate - temperatures run about 50-75 Fahrenheit year round, give or take a few degrees. Being up in the mountains means you don't have to worry about mosquitos, so you can keep your windows open all the time without worrying about bugbites.

The central area of Mexico City, where I am, is known as the D.F. - distrito federal, or federal district. It contains all the government buildings, as well as some incredibly vibrant neighborhoods. And one of the best things about these neighborhoods is the amazing food. I'm living in an area called Tabacalera. Tabacalera, while safe and central, is not the most exciting area - it's more business-oriented than residential. There's no nightlife, and the fancier restaurants are all at least a 15 minute walk away. But that's what's so great about Mexico City: even in an area that is not known for its food, the food is amazing.

Take today, for instance. As I was walking back to my apartment this afternoon, I decided to stop and grab lunch somewhere. I found a little hole-in-the-wall taco joint, packed with people. The customers had filled the restaurant and spilled over onto the sidewalk, eating their lunches leaning against parked cars while one of the servers came around grabbing empty plates. So I wandered over to the grill, where two guys were chopping and frying meat, and ordered two beef tacos. They happily fried up tortillas and meat for me, and then pointed me towards the topping bar next to the grill. Toppings here are dramatically different - and much better - than the taco toppings we have at home, at least at my house. When I make tacos, they're hard shelled, with ground beef cooked in taco seasoning and served with lettuce, tomatoes, taco sauce and yogurt. Real Mexican tacos have very little in common with that meal. They're soft-shelled; the tortillas are made fresh, either by some little old lady (they're all over the place, I swear) or by the grocery store. The tortillas are fried and then filled with meat - but not ground meat, whole pieces of beef or pork or what have you. If it's not whole, it's usually chopped. Then you get to try out the toppings. I have yet to see lettuce or tomatoes, though I did see cucumber yesterday. This place had pickled jalapeños, sliced onions with sweet peppers, guacamole, and - deliciously - mashed potatoes. They also had great habañero salsa. The mild jarred salsa that we get in the states does exist here - I've seen some of the same brands - but as far as I can tell almost no one uses it. I decided that two tacos gave me two opportunities to try toppings, so I put the onion mixture on one and the mashed potatoes on the other, and then dumped guacamole and salsa on both. It was fantastic. It turns out that the mildness of the mashed potatoes goes really nicely with the kick of the habañero, resulting in an absolutely delicious taco.

As I stood outside the restaurant shoveling food into my mouth (seriously, it was really good), the waitress pointed me to a seat at a counter against the wall, and a kid working there came over for my drink order. Did I mention I washed this deliciousness down with fresh-squeezed orange juice? For about half the cost of a fast food meal in the states, I had two tacos made fresh in front of me and a large glass of incredibly fresh juice. And this particular restaurant was far from the exception - since I got here I've been eating extremely well.

There's a lot more to be said about the food here, and a ton of positive aspects of Mexico City, but I'll save them for a future post.