Journey From Cuernavaca to Xalapa

Hello! I´m now writing from Xalapa which will be my home for the next 5 months. We arrived here on Tuesday evening on a very wet and cold evening which was quite the switch from the always sunny and hot Cuernavacan weather. Before arriving in Xalapa however, we spent the weekend making a few stops along the way. We spent a few days in Puebla which has a very European feel to it, the architecture is very fancy and the city is well known for its building made with a combination of ladrillos y talavera, or bricks and painted ceramics. I really enjoyed the city center of Puebla, there was always something happening whether it be music or a clown performing with lots of spectators. The clown tradition here in Mexico is pretty strong, it´s not too uncommon to see a clown walking down the street in full clown attire.

We also spent one day in Tlaxcala, a city considerably smaller than the cities we had visited up to that point (still 100,000 people). I really enjoyed this city, it was really relaxed and very quiet compared to Puebla or Cuernavaca. In the city center in Tlaxcala, they were having a demonstration trying to encourage people to think locally about the products they consume and remind people that Mexico is a country founded on corn, tortillas, tamales, etc and not the fast food restaurants and large corporations that are slowly infiltrating Mexican society. So, they had a tent up selling delicious tamales and 6 of us from our group ate there to support their cause. We all ate until we were stuffed and paid an unbelievable 86 pesos for everything, about 6 dollars.

Sooo, on to Xalapa! I now have about 3 days here and I´m beginning to get to know the city by exploring and walking lots of places. There are lots of really cool things to do here in town and many more attractions close by. I am living with my new host family, its been a bit of an adjustment from my last host family, but I´m slowly getting to know them. The family dynamics are very different here than in Cuernavaca, my family is much more timid and less talkative here. They run a restaurant business out of their home and deliver the food to people. My host dad also works as a chofer on hollywood movies that are filmed here in Mexico. The way he described it to me, it sounds really spuratic, he basically gets a telephone call one day and needs to be on the set the next day and might be gone for months at a time working as a chofer getting the actors from one place to another. As I mentioned earlier, the weather is also quite a shift, today its finally sunny and dry, but still a bit chilly. The day we arrived the weather really reminded me of Scotland which I wasnt expecting at all. My classes will start up in a few days which I am excited about. I live about a 20 minute walk from the School for Foreign Students and about 5 minutes from the Humanities campus of the Universidad Veracruzana. I plan to take 3 classes at the UV and 2 at the School for Foreigners. I really looking forward to getting plugged in with the university atmosphere here and begin to meet some peers and take classes. Well, I think I will leave it at that for now, we have our cultural history class with Rob here in a few minutes. Ok, until next time!

Pictures: the center of town in Xalapa, a view of the cloud covered mountains from the

city square in Xalapa, and climbing through tunnels in a pyramid in Cholula which I realize I didnt mention in blog post (Cholula is a city outside of Puebla which actually has the biggest pyramid by volume in the world and archaelogists made tunnels to study to the construction of the pyramid). Looking back over my pictures, I left out so many details of our trip. I would love to show my photos to people when I get back and explain all the fun things that I´m leaving out in the blog posts :)