Arrival and Teotihuacan

Hola!! I wanted to start this blog to keep everybody up to date on my travels this summer and share some of the cool pictures I am taking without overloading Facebook.

Dangling my feet over the edge of the Pyramid of the Moon

Off to a good start...

Yesterday was our first night in Mexico. We arrived at the Mexico City airport at about 3:00, but we did not end up getting back to the University where we were meeting our host families until about 6, which was still earlier than what the families were told. By the time me and Mandy's host, Margarita Pineireo Lorenzo, showed up, we had already talked through all the worst and best possible scenarios of what she would be like and were both nervous and excited.

She showed up and immediately began chattering away to us in Spanish. She is a mom with grown up kids and an adorable little grandson, but she lives alone with a dachshund named Pate. Her son in law drove us back to her house, which is small but filled with incredible pieces of art. She showed us around, fed us a delicious dinner, and laughed at our Spanish all evening until bedtime.

This morning when we came downstairs she had set up a nice breakfast for us and packed little baggies full of cookies, because she knows that we are used to eating earlier and didn't want us to be hungry. She seems to absolutely love having us, and we can already see our Spanish improving after one day from talking to her.

I will absolutely be posting pictures of the house, Margarita, the art, and the dog when I get the chance to take some.

Pyramids, sunburn, and school sanctioned alcohol tasting...

We didn't get to bed until late, and we had to get up at ten till seven to get ready for our first adventure, a day trip to Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan is a historic city that used to be a very sacred place for the Toltecas, a people that lived before the Aztecs. The bus ride was an hour long, but we finally arrived, and the first thing we saw was a group of men, in traditional attire, attached by the ankle to the top of a large pole, playing musical instruments while spinning. 

They were playing music....

I'm still not really sure why that happened, but I'm glad it wasn't me up there.

Next we went in to meet with our tour guide and go explore the city. We climbed up the first pyramid, The Temple of the Plumed Serpent, and got to hear about a lot of the legends, the different gods represented in the carvings, and what they represented. It was beautiful to say the least, and hearing about the culture was awesome.

My group approaching Teotihuacan

Climbing the first structure of the day

Carvings in the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent

You can see the carvings of snakes bursting out of the stone, which represents a god of wisdom called Quetzalcoatl, and a god called Tlaloc with big googly eyes in the statue, who is a god of rain and nourishment for the earth.


We walked through a museum with a lot of interesting artifacts from the time period.

Early carvings that I thought were cool

A ceremonial brazierre

Cooking tools

The other two pyramids we climbed were the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun was by far the highest and quite a workout but with a breathtaking view at the top, and the Pyramid of the Moon was a fun place to sit and hang out for a while.

After conquering the Pyramid of the Sun

View from the top of Pyramid of the Sun

Me and my roommate Mandy

After climbing so many pyramids, we went to a restaurant and ate a huge, buffet style lunch around 3:00. We watched a traditional dance, and were shown a lot of volcanic stones by the shopkeepers there. We were also shown a type of very special cactus called Maguey, which can be used for paper, sewing, and making delicious drinks. We sampled four alcoholic beverages. First off was a very interesting one called Pulque, which comes from Maguey. Next was just tequila, and we learned what they say in Mexico before taking a shot. After that we tried something called Mezcla which had a single, dead worm floating in the bottle (intentionally, that's what it is known for) which totally freaked us all out. Finally, we tried this drink that was labeled the drink of the gods and tasted like apple cider.
This was all part of the program, after all that exercise and sweating and sunburn and Mexican food. Spanish classes in America are not nearly as fun, or as exhausting!

Oh, and to top it all off, this little Burro was chilling by the bus when we got back.

Yep, we're definitely in Mexico and it was a great first day.