In The Valley of Style and Pleasant Living...

Good news 1: I can úśé áććéńtś. Well, that´s fun. But now I don´t have apostrophes. Just letterless accents...

Good news number 2: Morgan Kanninen´s friend Erika has offered to let me use her bike! I´m going to call her once I get up the guts and meet up with her. I am a big chicken when it comes to phones, and I haven´t had a whole lot of confidence in my Spanish so far. But she sounds super cool, a devoted member of the BiciEllas, a badass group of lady cyclists here in the city. Morgan, by the way, has been very helpful for this trip. Thank you Morgan, for all the prefab friends, the advice, and the Metrobus card!

On the 8th I met up with all the UC kids, and they took us out to a fine fancy dinner. That was pretty cool, except what I ordered is apparently a very finicky dish and was kind of intolerably sweet, though it was very beautiful: itś called chile en nogalada (as I remember), and consists of a chile filled with meat and raisins and such, and covered with walnut sauce. Cool, huh? Anyway, the UC kids seem pretty nice, but like usual, I feel really isolated when thrown into a group and so I kind of keep to myself. Thatś all right by me. I get plenty of time to think. I haven´t had time to think in a really long time. The program is run by a really nice middle aged fella who apparently used to teach at UCSD, and now this is his full time job. Sweet deal. So, news flash, California taxpayers: you bought a big ass mansion in a fancy part of Mexico City. Thatś where Iḿ taking classes for the next month. They were filming a soap opera there today when we went to class... Photos uploaded!

Anyway, so on Friday night I was practically airlifted out of Mexico city by my dadś friend Lilia, her husband Chato and their driver, Luis. Girl, this was DELUXE treatment I got this weekend, you have no idea. She shows up at the door, looking very distinguished and design-y (sheś pretty much got the quintissential achitect-of-my-momś-generation look: big glasses, simple-yet-elegant clothing, interesting but unobtrusive accoutrements), and enthusiastically introduces herself to me... sheś very kind. We helicoptered into Tepoztlán in her sedan while she chatted me up about my dad and talked a bit about her career (no small deal—she founded the school of Landscape Architechture at UNAM!). It was drizzling on the ride and as we came down the other side of the mountains which divide the southern end of Mexico City from Tepoztlán and Cuernavaca, which are in these beautiful green valleys which on this occasion were veiled by gauzy fog... the mountains there are very beautiful. Iḿ working on looking up the geology of the area, so youĺl have to be patient on that count. Anyway, we slowed to a crawl on the cobbled streets of Tepoztlán and stopped at this lavender-painted garage door... they have this incredible house. They have a perfect view of three mountain peaks (plus the fisheye from the back of an old VW combi glued to the window), and a sweet library that I forgot to take pictures of... a nice kitchen with some bright red tile... collections of art on the walls and tables and desks and hanging from the ceiling... They fed me a Caesar salad and pasta with butter and parmesan (life is good), and told me lots of interesting things about design and history... and I crashed hardcore and woke up and did the yoga stuff Jordan taught me (Ive been doing so every morning, thank you Jordan!) and they took me out on the town... we went to a wonderful church and got to look at all the painting on the wall done mostly by the locals as a means to convert them (how that works I dont know)... there are four outdoor chapels outside the church and this is why: most people in the Americas were used to having religion happen outside, and the Catholics pretty much stayed inside. So as a compromise, they built these structures so that the priest was under cover and everyone else sat outside, to listen to sermons. I guess itś kind of like acclimating plants to a different temperature regime? Personally I dont think I would have been any more convinced that I should change my religion just because they built these things (with the forced labor of other locals, probably). We went to another two churches in Cuernavaca, where I learned that at one point they had been ornately decorated with gold-leaf covered carvings yadda yadda yadda and then anything fancy was burned during the revolution, kind of by rote (like, hey, this is a revolution!) but apparently also to squeeze as much gold as possible out of that stuff—which of course was very little. So the stuff-less cathedrals have been refurbished over the years, and one of them was done up in a kind of modernist way, which was kind of weird. It was total chaos, the visit to that one, because Lilia and Chato were elaborating on the history of the place while some folks were trying to get married amidst the din of an organ and wandering tourists and the fragrance of hyacinths and such... At one point they tried to get me to go into this room with an altar and a sign on the door that said, THIS ROOM IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR PRAYING IN. NO TOURISTS. And I sat outside listening to them talk, trying to be polite both to them and to the Catholic Church. It was an odd spot, because really, I dont know enough about religions to be comfortable in churches ever.

Conclusion: LEARN MORE ABOUT RELIGIONS.

That afternoon we went out to the most amazing damn restaurant: it was in this fancy hotel and there were peacocks and parrots and cockatoos running around and the food was dangerous (I had enchiladas in mole rojo and almost died of happiness). I also learned of the existence of Veracruz Mint Juleps (mom, take note!). Iḿ not sure what makes them different from normal mint juleps, but I guess you could look that up if you really cared.

Then, we got back and she showed me all these cool books, including! A book of the photographs of Armando Salas Portgal featuring the Architecture of Luis Baragal. A book called Vegetación de México by Jerzy Rzedowski of the UNAM, who is the Biologist of the Century according to some science bigwigs. Sweet! And itś a really great book. I now am pursuing a copy of my own. Then there were two complementary books, one a series of facsimiles of Latin codices documenting the ethnobotanical annals of Mexico, including Nahatl names, and then a translation. Itś way cool.

Conclusion: LEARN ABOUT THE FLORISTICS OF MEXICO.

THEN, my last morning in Tepoztlán we went to another fancy hotel/restaurant, this one with the most AMAZING view of the valley, and weŕe talking about a perfectly clear morning, too, and a buffet breakfast. Oooooh... then I got to go climb up a mountain, the mighty TEPOZTECO, atop which sits a pyramid plus 7 gajillion tourists from Mexico City. Itś pretty cool, though, because thereś such a great view, and these funny little animals called Tejones that children were feeding peanuts. The rocks on these mountains are wonderful, all volcanicky and such. What I still marvel at is that anybody would want to walk that far uphill on a regular basis (said the girl from San Francisco). Of this I overheard a man say, Por este su cultura desapareció! (Thatś why their culture disappeared!),

Conclusion: learn about geology and ancient Mexican history.

I will brief you, dear readers, on the history of the Valle de Mexico, in the next entry. Ive already written too much today. But itś some cool stuff--a literally layered history....

But before I conclude, I have a PSA: send me a letter!

Cat Callaway
c/o Universidad de California
Apartado Postal 70-586
Mexico DF 04510
MEXICO