Puebla

Road Trip!

This past weekend, we went to Puebla! 

If you don't know anything about it, which, I didn't, it is the town where the Mexicans won a battle against the French, for which we now celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Interestingly enough, that isn't a thing here. It's a super Americanized holiday. However, the town is fantastic. The people there are super sweet, the roads are nicely numbered and organized into a grid that even I can understand, and they have a whole street of just candy, a bunch of markets, and a cute church on every single corner.

I was a big fan of the whole candy thing.

Candy display in a shop.

I bought a cute little basket of traditional Mexican candy for my family.

The streets and churches were all so beautiful.

My fav street pic

A little street full of shops

This church was all gold inside!

And the zocalo (town square) was buzzing with activity.

Street performer

There were normal, street markets...

...and there were flea markets/antique markets with a bit more random wares. I wanted to buy Kayla an antique coin at this market since she collects them, and my friend showed me a stand where a vendor was selling necklace charms made of punched out coins. Imagine you took a US quarter and punched out everything but the eagle. They were beautiful, and there were some old Mexican ones. One had maiz, and one had the escudo. I couldn't decide, and I wanted one for myself, so I decided to get both. They were originally priced at 200 pesos apiece, which I thought was reasonable for how pretty they are. I talked the nice vendor down to 320 pesos, just over $21. I paid and left, which meant going out of the market, down the block, and around a corner. Then, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the vendor. I had overpaid him by $20 pesos, and he had tracked me down to give me back the extra! Now, I don't know about you, but if I had had my stuff talked down to below my asking price, and my customer had given me $1.33 in US dollars and left, I would NOT have tracked them down to give it back, and I think I'm pretty honest! I took the money because it happened so quickly, but in hindsight I wish I had let him keep it. I love when people are that nice.

There was also an art market, and I bought a small canvas painting with a Maguey.

These artists are painting the model in the middle!

I almost bought one of these sweethearts.

Just kidding Mom and Dad! I won't actually bring an old English sheepdog puppy home from Mexico.

We found some tradicional dancers performing on the way to the art market. We literally just stumbed upon this performance, and it was incredible.

It was an overall fantastic two days of walking around and exploring. Friday night we had a big dinner, and I tried some very odd foods including ant eggs and cooked worms.

Gusanos de Maguey, I ate one...

The worms were meh, but the ant eggs (escamole) were fantastic.

Last night we had our farewell dinner for Doctora Gallaway with all of the families. It was fun because Margarita and her son in law Vicente both came. I finally got to try flan! I also embarrassed myself in front of EVERYBODY. I walked into a stationary taxi. I have a huge scrape on my leg to prove it, and Vicente wouldn't stop laughing at me.

We have Doctor Rodriguez as our new professor. I miss Doctora. Her class simply cannot be beaten, but Doctor seems nice enough. The lectures are incredibly boring, but it is a project based class about documentaries, so we will be crazy busy for the next week and a half running around, filming, interviewing, and researching. Our topic is water privitization. I will share with you the final product, but unless you speak Spanish I'm afraid you'll find it very boring.

Last night was actually the worst. I had so much homework to do, both from Doctora and Doctor Rodriguez. Today was fun. I went on a run with Mandy and watched two documentaries. We also had a professional visit to a social entrepreneurship company. It was actually really cool. 

Get excited for my blog next month, because I'm getting excited for my next trip! We have started planning our weekend trips for during my 5 weeks in Spain, and it looks like I will be going to Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Lisbon, Pamplona (for running of the bulls), Morocco, and either Sevilla or Paris. I feel so incredibly lucky to have the chance to do all of this, and even luckier that my family is coming with me for the first week and that my boyfriend will potentially be able to visit me with his Delta flights. 

Time to get back to work! I'll talk to you guys again soon.