Hello everyone! Wow, I have only been in Mexico for a day and a half and it already feels like I've been here for a while! So far I am having a great time and I am very happy with my program! Yesterday I arrived without problems at the airport after a long day of flying and was welcomed by our program director Bernadette. We are currently staying in a super nice hotel in Mexico City and being tourists for the week which is lots of fun, but quite tiring. As soon as we arrived, we started speaking spanish and its a requirement of the program that we only speak in spanish so I feel like I'm improving already. I have met almost all of the other 9 student in the program and they are all super nice and I am looking forward to getting to know them this semester!
After a very sound sleep last night, we set off this morning to see the sights in the centro historico of the city. We took the metro, which is crowed like NYC but actually quite clean and has a lot of artwork in the stations; there are even special cases to display rotating art shows. However, there is also dominos pizza. (I have quickly discovered that everything from Sears to McDonalds in here.) We arrived in the Zocalo- the main Plaza and there were tons of people, especially tons of people selling all kinds of things right on the street- jewelry, textiles, food. First we visited the palacio nacional where there are incredible murals painted by Diego Rivera of the history of Mexico and of the mesoamerica cultures of Mexico. It was so interesting and amazing to see these murals and have our tour guide explain to us the history that they represent (in spanish of course!)
Next stop was the national cathedral, which is very large and has a very richly decorated interior with lots of gold and statues and flowers. There was even a service going on while we were there! It was interesting for me to see how similar the architecture of both of these buildings were to the Spanish architecture that I saw in Spain. We also visited a very old and important monastery which is now the head quarters for the department of education. Diego Rivera also painted many murals here, many of which have very communist messages. It is amazing to see this kind of art in a government building!
We then ate our first mexican meal (which they eat in the late afternoon around 2ish) and I have a delicious dish Chile Negado that is a chile pepper stuffed with meat with a sweet sauce with pomegranate!
As we walked to our next destination, we walked through an entire street dedicated to huge puffy wedding and party dresses...I have never seen so many princess like dresses in the same place!
We then went to an art museum to see more amazing murals and then we went to the top of the tallest skyscraper in mexico city at sunset and saw the entire city....It is huge, but very pretty with lots of different colored buildings and parks. Its amazing to think that so many people live in one city!
Well, now I'm pretty tired out but very excited about the rest of our stay here- we have lots of other cool things to do!
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