Mexico City and Kites!

I went to Mexico City on Saturday to try and meet up with a friend, and to check out a photo exhibition of a mutual acquaintance in the Bosque of Chapultepec. Well, due to cell phone troubles and various other reasons, I struck out on both goals!! However, while looking for several asian restaurants in the Zona Rosa (where the US Embassy is), I stumbled across a Korean bakery--it made the whole trip worthwhile! I bought five different types of bread (four of them came in two-packs). The mochi was awesome, as well as two of the other sweet breads. Two of them, however, were just so-so...but mmMMmmmm, I haven't had that kind of bread in a long, long time. I also stopped by a highly-rated Chinese restaurant (some bloggers claim it is the most authentic Chinese restaurant in Mexico City). While it was run by a Chinese person, and it had CCTV (Chinese satellite television), I would only rate it so-so. When you can't get most of the ingredients fresh, it doesn't really matter how good of a cook you are...

While exploring the Bosque of Chapultepec, I snapped this picture of double-Mexican flags.



Sunday, in the morning was the 10th Annual National Kite Contest in Atlixco, where they had the world's largest chile en nogada. National is probably up for debate, but it was a fun event. Atlixco has a big hill in the middle of town with a church on top and an amphitheater on the hillside, and the hilltop gets lots of wind. As a result, only a couple got their kites up high and for longer then a couple of minutes. I snapped this shot of a kite in front of Popo.



Also, there were a lot of Charlie Brown trees getting their full of kites today...

Paso de Cortés

We went up to the Paso de Cortés, between the two volcanoes that you can see from my site, Popo and Izta for short. It is how Cortés traveled from Puebla to México City when he was conquering the natives. Unfortunately we didn´t realize how far it was from the city, so we only got to spend a couple hours hiking in the pass. There are supposed to be a couple of waterfalls, so I will have to go back sometime. Here, the flags of CONANP (like our National Park Service), México, and the National Park of the two volanoes is backdropped by the cloud-covered Popo.



Also, I snapped this picture last week. There is a local church famous for its interior decorations (no pictures allowed inside, so no evidence here). Inside it is full of this amazing handwork on all the walls and ceiling. They manually ring their bells, though, so this poor guy was up in the bell tower trying to cover one ear while ringing the bell with his other hand.

New Site

So a couple weeks ago I moved to a new site, and I´ve been settling in. It´s definitely much easier the second time around...I understand the bus system, just not the local routes, and with an upgraded language ability I can communicate fairly well with the people.

This is the view from my small town. This is an active volcano, called Popo for short. You can hike near the volcano, but I´m not sure if you´re allowed to hike up this one. Some of the inactive volcanoes in the area you´re allowed to hike up with a permit and appropriate gear.



Also, I went to a local museum a couple weekends ago that has some really interesting pre-Hispanic artifacts. Skulls and death are important, as shown by Day of the Dead and the Katrina figurine that are popular all over México.