DF, Cuernavaca, Taxco y el rancho!

Aren't they cute, although they didn't want me to pet them, they were totally digging having their picture taken, I swear they were posing for the camera.

These are the puppies that were there the last time I went, they've grown a lot, they've also grown less friendly. I tried to call them over to me... that didn't work. But a hour and a couple of tortillas later they finally came around.

These are the tamales cooling.

Then we went to Maetzin's grandparents house where we made capulin tamales (it's a cherry-like fruit, I'm not sure what it would be in English...)

This is a cool lizard I found while we were out walking around, it was nice of him to pose for me...

This is Las Grutas de Cacahuamilpa (which is near Taxco), which includes big caves with stalagmites and stalactites and a river that runs under/through the caves and back out again.

This is me and Tatiana. Maetzin and I always went to the same cafe in Taxco to eat and at first Tatiana would come in and try to sell us stuff, but then after a while I started to get the feeling that she just came in to talk to us. She's 12 and she speaks Nahuatl (a native language of Mexico) along with Spanish.

Like all good Zocalos this one has the main church.

This is what the city of Taxco looks like, pretty much all white or brick (orange-y) houses, curving streets with no side walks and lots of Volkswagen taxi's and Volkswagen vans (in place of buses).

This is Taxco (the people were a lot friendlier here).

This was native dancing in the Zocalo (square) in Cuernavaca.

This is the fine city of Cuernavaca.
The people were really not very friendly there... but there was a cool museum and we took a tour of the city on one of these train car things, during which we were constantly dodging tree limbs and electrical wires (it was one of the two story ones, we were on the top)...

My last two weeks in Mexico, my friend Maetzin and I went and traveled around Mexico a bit.
This is Xochimilco in Mexico city. You can rent one of these brightly colored boats with a table and chairs on it and take it out on the lake.

El DF y Teotihuacan

We couldn't take pictures in the actual exhibit, but here are some posters they had up outside.

Also in Mexico City's Zocalo (the big square in the center) was the Gregory Colbert Nomadic Museum. He has really cool photography and word on the street is that the whole museum is made of recycled materials and it is packed up and travels all over the world.
Here's his web site if you want to check it out.
http://www.ashesandsnow.org/

These are things used in an offering to the gods.

Musical instruments.

These next pictures are a mix of Aztec, Mayan and Oaxacan artifacts.

This is a sample of an Aztec codex. They used pictures to record information.
In nahuatl pictures can be used to express solely an idea, or they can be used together to express a sound or relationship.

Coatlicue (meaning skirt of snakes) or Teteoinan (meaning the mother of gods), according to Aztec mythology, is the goddess of the earth, both life and death. Her skirt of snakes symbolizes fertility and her necklace of hands, hearts and skulls comes from her living off of human sacrifices. She is believed to have given birth to the moon and the stars, and to Huitzilopochtli the god of the sun and war.

The Aztecs had two calenders, Xiuhpohualli (year count) consisting of 365 days, considered an agricultural calender and Tonalpohualli (count of days) consisting of 260 days, considered a sacred calendar. Every 52 years the 2 calenders would coincide along with the first appearance of the pleiades asterism also known as the 7 sisters (a star cluster), beginning the calendar cycles again.

Here's the real version of the previous picture.

This is me in front of a representation of a stone carving. It sure was nice of them to paint it to match my shirt.

We also went to el Museo de Anthropologia/ the museum of anthropology where they have artifacts from the Aztec and Mayan cultures among many others.

I didn't get a good picture of the pyramid of the sun... but it's ginormous, as you can see in this picture. Those tiny dots on the top are people. My legs were sore for days after climbing up and down pyramids all day, and some of the steps are really tall and thin... kind of scary...

This is the pyramid of the moon from the top of the pyramid of the sun.

This is Teotihuacan, there's the bigger pyramid of the sun in front and then the smaller pyramid of the moon behind it.

This man is dressed in another (perhaps earlier) native style, burning herbs (we thought sage...) as part of a native practice.

This is a guy dressed in native style, playing a shell in the zocalo (big open square in the center of Mexico City)

In the government building they have various murals painted on the walls, representing the conquest.

This is a statue built in honor of Benito Juarez (an ex-president of Mexico, well known for being awesome... I think just in general).

This last weekend my study abroad group went to Mexico city and Teotihuacan (ruins out side of Mexico City)
This building is the Palacio de Bellas Artes/ The palace of fine arts.

Nuestras aventuras en Guanajuato y Mineral de la Luz

And here's a cool house... I'm not sure if anyone actually lives here, but it's got character.

Here's some cows... chilling...

Here's some of the local plant life.

They fed us and then we went and walked around.

We were invited, along with Maetzin, to my friend Faby's community (really small town) called Mineral de la Luz. Which you get to by taking a bus, out of town along a dirt road for about an hour.

Here's me and Brie at Santo Cafe, which you get to by walking up a pretty steep side walk and you can sit outside on this bridge and people watch, oh and they have tasty smoothies.
They get a two thumbs up rating!

We've mostly been relaxing and walking around, exploring the city.
Here's Emily and Brie during one of our many bus rides, which we decided might be best compared to the Alice In Wonderland ride at Disneyland... the jury is still out at to whether that's a good, or bad thing...
For those of you who have not visited, the roads here are super windy.

But despite the conditions, I think it turned out quite nicely.

And she finally got her chance...
On a roof, in Mexico, with some giant sewing scissors.
Maybe not quite how she had imagined it...

Something that I know Brie's been dying to do for about 2 years, is cut my hair...