The Big City

We have had quite a time in Mexico City this past week. Just returned from dinner- tacos of course- with David and Danielle. We met so many intelligent folks this week with amazing goals... about 80 other Fulbright recipients from around the country, who will be living in various locations throughout Mexico. The range of topics scanned from family art therapy; geographic variation in the mating system of the Mesquite lizard; preventing gestational diabetes; the impact of immigration on women and children; comparing Cuban and Mexican boxing; Autism research; migration of tree fruit crops; language and identity among Syrian Jews Mexico City... and much, much more.

Figuring out our cell phones in the hotel room with our new friends Jose and Naomi

We attended a fancy cocktail party at the U.S. Embassy, visited Teotihuacan, a 300,000 person settlement from many, many years ago (with the third largest pyramid in the world),

We visited the Palacio Nacional where Diego Rivera´s murals cover 16,000 square feet of wall space.

We also made plans to visit newly made friends who will be living in Queretaro, Oaxaca, and Merida, among other friends in other locations perhaps. One of the craziest moments of our trip was taking a taxi to a Mexican family's home for dinner (arranged through Fulbright). Our taxi trip was 2 and 1\4 hours long, as the cabbie became lost (unbeknownst to us for quite some time). The family was so great- the father tried out his English and played songs by various American artists for us and had us guess who was singing. Other than the little bits of English thrown out by the father and oldest son, Spanish was spoken and Josh was a real hero for keeping the conversation going. I sputtered words here and there, but mainly did a lot of smiling and laughing- even if I didn't know what was being said.

Mexico City is one of the craziest cities I have visited. There are just so, so many people here. We hope to return soon to visit more sites and friends. A last highlight of the trip was our visit to Frida Kahlo's house- she is a fascinating Mexican artist with an alluring life story. I hope to post more photos and stories soon, but wanted to get this out there for now...