Mexico City!

Last Tuesday morning we got up early and took a bus to Mexico City. The bus was nice, and it wasn’t a bad ride. We arrived around 11:30 am and met up with Katie and Diana. Their apartment is a tiny one room place that basically serves all purposes. The entire thing is about the same size as Kizzy’s bedroom. We dropped of our things, ate some lunch, and then headed out for some adventures. Our first stop was Chapultepec park, where we rented a pedal boat and pedaled around the lake for an hour. It was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun. We even got into a boat ramming war with a group of four guys, who later asked if they could take our picture. People are so funny here. From there, we walked through the park to Chapultepec castle where Maximillian and Carlotta (Austrians who briefly ruled Mexico in the 1800’s). It was beautiful, and we saw some really interesting things. One that impacted me the most was a huge painting of the conquering of Mexico by Hernan Cortes and his army. It was really sad, and depicted the Spaniards fighting the Indians. We also saw some amazing dresses that the wealthy nobles in Mexico wore.
After the castle, we set off on an adventure to find the house where my mom lived when her parents were mission presidents in Mexico City. She had given us the address, and the approximate location, and we hopped on a bus and asked the driver to let us off when we got close. He indicated where, and we got off and asked around for the location of the street. We were told it was a little further down, so we kept walking. We continued, and when we asked again, were told the same thing. We ended up walking for probably over an hour, and were exhausted by the time we arrived. It looked like a church owned building (I don’t know why exactly…I guess it just had that feeling about it) so we rang the doorbell, and eventually a woman named Sister Meeks (the mission president’s wife) welcomed us in. It turns out that the home is used in exactly the same way as it always has been…the family of the mission president lives in the main part, the mission office is connected, and there are apartments above the office where the office elders and assistants to the president live. Very interesting. We walked into the office, and there was a frame with pictures of all the previous mission presidents. There was a picture of my mom and her family. It was almost surreal to see that…a picture of my grandparents, mom, aunts and uncles, hanging on a wall in a foreign country. Sister Meeks then walked us through the house, and we looked at all the different rooms. The carpet and furniture is different, but I’m sure that most of it is much the same as when my mom lived there. I took some pictures, and a short video of the house, and we talked with Sister Meeks about her family and the mission. She told us that it is likely that the Church will sell that house when they leave, because it is getting old, and there are some plumbing problems, etc, and also, the house is located far away from their actual mission boundaries. (When my mom lived there, it was the “Mexico City Mission”. Now there are four missions in Mexico City, and the house and office pertain to the “Mexico City South Mission”). It was a really neat experience to be there, and see that house, and I’m grateful that I got to do it now, since in a year or so it might not even belong to the Church anymore.
That evening, we went to the employment office in Mexico City (in the section of Polanco), which was nice, and looked a lot like our office (but I think ours is a bit nicer). Then we went out for some great tacos, and headed to the box office to see a movie. We had some time to kill before it started, so we wandered around the city a bit. The city is beautiful…there are high rises everywhere, but there are also lots of trees and beautiful gardens and statues (it doesn’t come close to Puebla though, when it comes to fountains). We ended up seeing the movie “Goal!” staring Kuno Becker (one of our new favorites). It’s about a Mexican who lives in Los Angeles, and goes to England to play soccer professionally (deals with three of my favorite countries). It was really good, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We then walked home (about a 15 minute walk) around midnight. For all the horror stories of Mexico City, I didn’t once feel unsafe. We mostly walked past lots of policemen.
The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed (or in my case, off the floor), and got ready to go to the great ancient city of Teotihuacan (also known as Tenochtitlan), with the pyramid of the Sun (reputably the tallest p yramid in the world) and the pyramid of the Moon. We took a long metro ride, and then a long bus ride, and finally arrived at some incredible ruins. The pyramids were extremely impressive. We climbed to the top of the pyramid of the Sun and sat down to eat, and to read the Book of Mormon together. From the top, you can see what looks like an entire city of ruins, and temples and pyramids. It was pretty incredible. As we read from the Book of Mormon, we tried to imagine ancient Americans walking about and doing their business, worshipping, teaching, etc. After taking lots of pictures, we finally headed down to the bottom of they pyramid, and then continued to explore. We walked to the pyramid of the moon, and also hiked to the top of that one. On the very top, there is basically just a big pile of rocks (cemented together, but in the form of a pile). It was beautiful to look at the rocks and the sky and just feel the beauty of where we were, and the grandeur of the ancient society that built that place that has lasted for so long. We finished the day exhausted, and ready to rest. Somehow, the bus ride home seemed shorter, and we arrived back in Mexico City in no time. We ate dinner, and then went back to Katie and Diana’s apartment for the night.
Thursday morning we got up and headed back to Puebla (as much as I loved our Mexico City trip, I really felt at home as I stepped off the bus and set foot on Puebla soil). We got home, changed into skirts and headed out for the office. We were there for a short time, and then left for Atlixco, where we were scheduled to teach the workshop, and eat dinner with Maria Jose and her family. They were very hospitable, and we had a good time eating with them. The workshop went well, but we were fairly exhausted by the end. The couple assigned to drive us home (Mario and Columba) were very kind, and took us out to dinner on the way home. We had some more excellent tacos (I actually ordered something called Alambre con queso that turned out to be so big that I took the vast majority of it home with me). After that, we finally got home and were ready to fall into bed when the doorbell rang. I dutifully answered, and found Juan Carlos and Abinadi had come to welcome us back to Puebla. We chatted for a bit, and then they left and I gratefully went to bed (even my super hard mattress felt like heaven after two nights of sleeping on the floor).
I spent Friday morning doing homework, and then we went to the office, then to Atlixco to finish the workshop, and finally, to a stake dance. We were invited to go out dancing to a club afterwards, but we were so tired that we opted out of it, and came home. On the way home, we squeezed nine of us into a little two door sedan. There were six girls in the back, stacked two high. It was quite the ride. I sat on Kizzy the whole way home, and hopefully she had regained feeling in her legs.

Sunday was my birthday, and Saturday night we had a party which included dancing, crazy party games, and roasting marshmallows for s'mores over candles. It was a good time. We have some great friends here, and life is good.