fotos... finally!

here's my roomies at el tigre, the most popular antro (club) near campus. left to right: me, vero, wendy, malu, andrea, and krista (also from VU).

i think this is monte alban, in oaxaca.

also in oaxaca, here's a random street parade that kelly and i happened upon! it was lovely, with lots of singing and dancing - and we have no idea why!

mexico has the prettiest flowers!

climbing on the mangrove roots in veracruz with mel and jess.

incomodo, the baby duck i fell in love with on campus almost immediately. this picture was taken in mid-january, so by the time we left, he was MUCH bigger than this!

finally, a picture of TAXCO! my favorite city in mexico! this was the silver-mining town we visited near the pacific coast in february. this picture was taken from my hotel balcony around 8:00 in the morning.

la virgen of guadalupe, in a cathedral in mexico city. you can go behind the altar to look up at her without disturbing the mass going on, or you can sit in the pews and view her over the altar.

extremely famous diego rivera murals at the palacio nacional in mexico city. they're painted on almost every wall on one floor's balconies.

the stunning colors at the barrio del artista (artist's neighborhood) in puebla. this was by far one of my favorite parts of the city. nearby is el parian, the main artisan's market in town, and another smaller market as well. this area is filled with artists' studios and sculptures.

this is colegio cain-murray, where i lived on campus. the lake is the one i always talked about sitting near, outside the centro social. the lake was also home to the many ducks and geese living on campus!

a beautiful view of the pyramid of cholula from near campus. this is visible from most parts of the city.

one of the beautiful yellow-painted buildings that i fell in love with in puebla.

here's jess and mallory (both from valpo) enjoying the heaping plates of fruit at la jugueria conchita near the UDLA's campus. it was one of our favorite breakfast spots.

the pyramid of the sun at teotihuacan. it was by far the biggest one we climbed!

final mexico tidbits

after a late night of spiderman 3 (the midnight showing) and an early morning of studying for my business final that was at 11am, i´m wiped. i slept on and off for 4 hours last night. i think this unable-to-stay-asleep-through-the-night thing might be my way of stressing about going back to the states. my friends start to leave tomorrow, a fact that makes me very very bummed when i think too hard about it.

anyway, since i´ve officially stopped paper-journaling, i thought i´d write a bit about some norms of mexican life that are not so normal in the states...

1. every morning and multiple times throughout the day, mexican shopkeepers and restaurant owners sweep the sidewalk in front of their store / restaurant. however, it is unheard of to sweep without dumping a bucket of water on the sidewalk first, thus sweeping away the water along with the leaves and trash that have accumulated on the sidewalk. this causes alot of puddles and wet feet, since i´m always wearing flip flops. also, it seems rather wasteful to me, to use so much water for something so trivial, when mexico has such a water shortage!

2. public restrooms in mexico are horrific! oftentimes they don´t have toilet paper, toilet seats, soap, towels, or doors. sometimes they don´t flush. if you want a semi-decent public restroom, you have to pay anywhere from 2 to 5 pesos to ¨buy¨ the toilet paper, and then most of the time you still have nothing to actually sit down on anyway. and, as always, there´s no toilet-paper-flushing allowed.

3. in markets, the people selling things are constantly calling to you about how cheap and pretty and perfect-for-you their products are. talk about pressure!

4. mealtime takes ages and i love love love it! you order, get your food, sit around for a long time, and the waiters never bring you your check. no rushing! when you´re ready to go, you simply get the waiter´s attention, motion with your hand like you´re writing in the air, and say ¨la cuenta, por favor¨ and they bring it to you. they never separate checks, so we´ve all become pros at splitting things and owing each other money. it´s kind of like our own little tanda!

5. the bottom 5 feet of mexican trees are painted white. this is to ward of diseases, i think.

6. there are topes (speed humps / bumps) every 10 feet on the road. it makes north edgewood avenue look flat!

7. it´s common for a huge neighborhood full of families to exist behind storefronts where we shop and eat every day! these small communities are called vecindades, and if you pay close enough attention, you´ll catch an entrance open and be able to sneak a peek back into it. most of the time, the people living in the vecindad are the people who own the shops in front of it.

8. after mass, every church sets of fireworks. catholics here really know how to celebrate and you pretty much hear fireworks constantly every sunday!

9. traffic cops control traffic with chiflando (whistling). sometimes they´re just champion whistlers or sometimes they actually have to use the plastic kind, but they all have their own different melodies that they use to alert the drivers when they should move and when they should stop. i want this job when i grow up!

10. you are expected to stop and talk to everyone you see and might possibly know. you may have only met them once or they might just be the lady who works at the front desk in your building, but regardless, you stop and say hello and ask how their day is going and have a pretty involved conversation. otherwise you´re considered rude. and even if your conversation only lasted 1.5 minutes, you´re still expected to hug and kiss each person you talked to when you arrive and when you leave.

11. mexicans frequently add ¨ito¨ or ¨ita¨ onto words, which supposedly diminishes it. for instance, chica means girl and chiquita means little girl. recuerditos are souvenirs, diosito can be used to refer to god, a bolsita is what you carry your groceries home in regardless of it´s size, and piedritas are pebbles. i made that last one up last night when i had rocks in my shoes, but apparently it´s a real word. basically if you want to sound mexican, you have to use the diminuative every 5 words (palabritas) in conversation.

also, a few days ago, i made a list of a few things i´ll miss about mexico:

1. ¨ahorita¨ -- an excuse to be tardy
2. sitting outside the centro social -- people watching, duck harassing, eating, drinking coffee, reading, talking, generally doing nothing...
3. food prices -- i can feed myself on less than 40 USD a week
4. solero lime ice bars
5. guanábana -- the flavor in general
6. raspados with chamoy
7. mexican music & american remixes
8. being awkward (mmkay, maybe not. but i´ll miss having an excuse for being awkward!)
9. attention on the streets?
10. topes every 10 meters on almost every street
11. discovering random farm animals in a small yard in the middle of the city (mom, can we buy a horse?)
12. popcatepetl & ixti
13. random festivals, fiestas, and parades
14. poblano architecture & talavera tiles
15. hugs & kisses as greetings and goodbyes
16. molotes de papas
17. life without my cell phone or computer
18. the orphans, particularly pachenco, vanesa, miguelito, & lucia, my feisty baby girl who said her first word & took her first steps with me
19. mealtime that lasts for almost an hour (if not longer) and happens at 10am, 2pm, and 7-8pm
20. hearing peacocks and loud mexican music during class at the cholula house
21. neck braces? seriously, they´re trendy at the UDLA.
22. mexican hand gestures (watch out for those!)
23. soccer soccer soccer soccer
24. having an alberca right here on campus!
25. sally & enrique
26. manzanita, horchata, & agua de jamaica
27. shopping in markets
28. excitement upon discovering american food favorites in random small stores
29. fútbol rápido games
30. my roommates!!!
31. switching back and forth between english and spanish in conversations without even thinking about it
32. the street cops with their amazing whistle melodies
33. red and white cholula busses
34. ball courts / tons of archeological sites / climbing pyramids
35. toronja soda
36. sitting around a table with americans, mexicans, australians, and people from many other countries
37. motivation to stop being lazy and really become bi-lingual, in the form of meeting people who are fluent in 3 or 4 or 5 languages
38. daily fashion shows at the UDLA
39. the gas & water trucks that play obnoxious music so people know they´re coming
40. the following restaurants: jugería conchita, los antojos del gordo, la suprema salsa, la chollulan antigua, super cemita, karma bagels, baladna, nameless-molote-restaurant, ice & grill, arracheras, fonda christy, etc.
41. mexican flowers
42. the amazingly sweet and beautiful lack of rain here (until the rainy season began to rear it´s head last week!)
43. sunshine all day every day
44. oscar´s dress shop
45. cheap drinks


and a few things i´m looking forward to in the states: flushing toilet paper, drinking tap water, free water at restaurants bc it doesn´t have to be bottled, american fashion magazines that cost less than 75 pesos, a kitchen with a stove and oven you don´t have to light with a match, root beer and potato salad, my favorite restaurants, being understood is a given rather than an accomplishment worthy of celebration, running in winton place, seeing my fam & friends!

see yall soon!!! :)

have you all seen the movie ¨nacho libre?¨

because it´s important to know if everyone will know what i´m talking about when i say i went to a lucha libre last night.

see this picture if you don´t: http://www.wrestling-wfs.com/imagenes/newimages/22-oct-05/croni-22-oct-05_24.jpg

basically it´s mexican wrestling. horribly staged, horribly acted, utter chaos, and absolutely hilarious! men are dressed in next to nothing, most wearing luchador masks (http://www.beaucoupkevin.com/images/luchador.jpg), throwing themselves at other men, kicking other men, slapping half-naked men the in the chest, and definitely working the crowd. one sweaty fighter went out into the crowd for kisses after he ¨lost¨ a fight. (winners are obviously predetermined.) there are generally anywhere from 2 to 6 men in the ring at once, sometimes all of them fighting together, sometimes 1 on 1, sometimes 3 or 4 on 1.

the lucha libre was in a huge enclosed arena, filled to the brim with people - we were standing the whole time, on the top balcony. it started at 9pm and entire families came, including their infants or toddlers. there was plenty of cursing and yelling and whistling and chanting going on and i´m pretty sure they used quite a few soccer cheers for the fighters. there was one adorable kid right next to me sitting on his dad´s shoulders and he kept getting really excited and clapping with his hands above his head.

what an experience.

the rainy season in mexico has begun and last night it thunderstormed quite a bit! it´s been getting cloudy every evening and drizzling most days around 7 or 8. this makes getting to dinner a bit difficult. it should be noted that mexican restaurants don´t do ¨servicio a domicilio¨ (delivery) when it´s raining because they don´t want to get wet. our roommates cancelled their plans last night, too, for the very same reason. very interesting...

if we went about life that way in valpo, i´m pretty sure no one would ever get a chance to go outside.

and mexico isn´t mexico without one or two crazy cab driver stories, right? i hadn´t really been given a chance to tell any stories until last night, when our driver missed the exit for the UDLA and decided to back up on the highway for about a half a mile. i was in the seatbelt-less backseat praying that no one would slam into us from behind on the slippery roads for about the 5 whole minutes we were going in reverse in the left-hand lane. then, after he realized it would take something like 15 minutes of backing up to get to a sufficient exit, he went forward again, got off at the nearest exit (the recta), headed toward puebla for about 20 m and then turned around to get to the front entrance of the udla. now, was that so hard??

that´s about it. today we have no classes, tomorrow i have one class, thursday i have 2 exams, friday i have one, and i still need to write a paper for my VU class. then i´m done! this is rather bizarre. i think the taxco trip this weekend has been cancelled since it might be more of a hassle than it´s worth.

i need to start packing.

¿que onda, cholula?

i just woke up - extremely disoriented - from a really bizarre dream. here´s the set-up: instead of coming home from mexico and staying in the states, i moved immediately on to valpo´s cambridge, england program. i mean immediately. i went to cincinnati, unpacked my bags, repacked my bags (with gloves and a scarf!) and hopped on a plane to london, where i met my new british roommates, decided to go to ireland for st. patrick´s day, and fell asleep in my bed in england. and then i woke up in my real bed in mexico.

i think this is a sign that i´m worried about culture shock and the fact that i don´t know what´s going on with my life after i leave mexico. both of which are true. oy vey.

so, i leave mexico next monday. how did that happen??

this past week was our last full week of classes. i turned in a couple of final papers, did a few final presentations (2 of them on fair trade coffee!), and have a couple more papers to turn in. we have classes on monday and wednesday of this coming week, but tuesday is el primer día de mayo, which apparently means we don´t have classes. april 30th is mexican childrens day and may 5th is obviously cinco de mayo (which, btw, commemorates a battle fought right here in puebla! more on that later.), but may 1st we get off school. no entiendo. i have 2 finals on thursday, 1 on friday, and then i´m done.

next sunday (the day before we leave), 4 of the valpo girls and the 3 minnesota guys are making a return trip to taxco... just for a last hoorah in mexico. we´re spending less than 24 hours there, and taking a bus to the mex city airport early the next morning so we can make our flights. i love taxco, so i´m pretty sure it´s a good place to spend my last night in mexico!

this weekend is my last in the greater cholula / puebla area. most everyone else went off to tlaxcala for the weekend, but i stuck behind to get things done. leah and mel and i are making some good old american food (bbq chicken, apple pie, & pralines), but first today, our friend vero is making us mole oaxaqueño. she has as much pride in her traditional oaxacan food as i have in ¨traditional¨(?) cincinnati food! then we´re headed into cholula to do some market hopping and buying of last-minute presents. tonight, it´s out to bambuko´s for our friend jen´s birthday and the fin de año.

last weekend was our last VU trip, to the aztec town of cuetzalan in the northernmost part of puebla (it´s at the end of the paved highway). the trip takes about 3 -4 hours and we were in a huge tour bus with its own bathroom - thank goodness, because i had food poisoning or some weird stomach bug & spent the majority of the trip in the bathroom, giving myself the title of queen of the vom bomb squad. i couldn´t even keep down a couple of sips of liquids, which was pretty awful. i missed most of the destinations on the trip, just because i was sleeping on the bus, but i did get to go to our last archeological site! everyone else went to the market in town, where everyone does their daily shopping. apparently it was even more intense than the one in cholula and they definitaly stuck out more with their blatant gringo-ness there. we also stopped at a chicken and black bean restaurant on the way home (helloooo, heaven!), but i could only eat a tortilla or two.

i´ve been feeling rather ill & aztec two-stepping on and off all week since then, but i think my stomach´s getting back to normal finally. go figure i wouldn´t get sick like that at the beginning of the trip like a normal person, but in my last 2 weeks, when i thought i was in the clear. boo.

we´ve been listening to pat xm satellite radio alot lately to get re-caught-up on what music´s on the radio in the states these days. i´m pretty sure they´re not going to be playing ¨no me digo que no¨ back at home, eh? anyway, most of the current music in the states sounds kind of boring to me. even the song shakira and beyoncé do together! also, a few weeks ago, my roommate was listening to music on her computer and beyoncé´s song ¨irreplaceable,¨ that was pretty new when i came down here, came on and i got really homesick. maybe just because i hadn´t heard it in awhile or because i realized you can miss alot in 4 months, but i´m not sure. i hadn´t really gotten homesick before that! random.

yesterday was rachel´s 20th birthday and i discovered how to call the states from a pay phone - using a phone card with only TWO minutes on it. so i got to talk to anne martina for a couple of seconds and then leave rachel a voicemail on her cell phone. and today is deanna´s 21st birthday as well! i hate missing these things!

el tigre is still a haven for creepsters. my latest encounter was with an argentinian guy who told me all about his girlfriend back in argentina while dancing in an inappropriate manner with me. not cool.

and an update on my summer plans, if that´s at all possible: i´m in the market for some cheap housing in seattle (ha! that´s an oxymoron if i ever heard it!) and am hoping to take an internship with the washington fair trade coalition (www.washingtonfairtrade.com) / the community alliance for global justice (www.seattleglobaljustice.org). with some paid work on the side, probably with the seattle aquarium or the pacific science center gift shops. (10 points for event network hookups!) i recently received an email, though, about possible internships in columbus (ohio) and san francisco, so let´s be honest... i still have no idea where i´ll be or what i´ll be doing. cincinnati is still an option, too.

there´s a hummingbird right outside the window!

i´ll be back in valpo late on the night of may 7th, by the way, in case you want to plan accordingly...

and, now i´m off to the store with leah - to buy ingredients for the food we´re making this weekend and also probably some cranberry juice, too. we want vero to try root beer, as well, so i hope they have that!

xoxoxo.

(for my sister)

summer / fall 2007 booklist
(suggestions welcome! bolded takes priority.)

1. irresistible revolution, by shane claiborne
2. god´s politics, by jim wallis
3. the audacity of hope, by barack obama
4. it takes a village, by hilary clinton (i suppose i should give the woman a chance??)
5. how the garcia girls lost their accents, by julia alvarez
6. the white man´s burden, by william easterly
7. the house on mango street, by sandra cisneros
8. the awakening, by kate chopin (re-read)
9. the tortilla curtain, by t.c. boyle
10. in the walled gardens, by anahita firouz
11. the ornament of the world, by maria rosa menecal
12. reinventing the melting pot, by tamar jacoby
13. the year of yes, by m.d. headley (teach me something, maybe??)
14. like lives, by lorrie moore
15. even cowgirls get the blues, by tom robbins
16. memoirs of a geisha, by arthur golden
17. the poisonwood bible, by barbara kingsolver
18. the great gatsby, by f. scott fitzgerald (re-read)
19. beloved, by toni morrison
20. three cups of tea, by greg mortenson
21. grace (eventually), by anne lamott
22. eat, pray, love, by elizabeth gilbert
23. the difference a day makes, by karen m. jones
24. how to make the world a better place, by jeffrey hollander
25. the daring female´s guide to ecstatic living, by natasha kogan
26. the better world handbook, by ellis jones
27. a thousand splendid suns, by kalled husseini
28. the red tent, by anita diamant
29. the glass castle, by jeannette walls
30. palestine, by joe sacco (a graphic novel!)

miscelaneous-ness

this is going to be rather disjointed, i´m sure, because i´ve been busy lately & i´d like to write it all down. i´m sorry in advance.

to get back to campus from the cholula house, it´s necessary to take about a 2 minute busride down the recta [one of cholula´s main streets] right to the UDLA entrance. if walking back to campus, it takes about 20 minutes going to the back entrance. on tuesday, we accidentally got on a san andres bus going to the UDLA, which takes a 45 minute hike through the neighborhood of san andres [where the UDLA is; the cholula house is in san pedro] before getting back to campus. it was a pretty sweet ride, because i saw lots of parts of town i hadn´t seen before [for instance, most everything on the other side of the pyramid] - essentially, we got a bus tour of town for only 4 pesos!

one of the best parts of mexico is its randomness, so here is a list of some of the random things i saw on this busride:
1. a random mound of earth and bricks with trees on top [i later realized it is an unexcavated archeological site... i think]
2. fields filled with flowers on the 2 far sides of the pyramid
3. 234 of the 365 catholic churches cholula has to offer
4. one was white and turquoise and covered in small cherubs
5. celebration flags hanging across streets, leftover from easter
6. a place to go paintballing in someone´s backyard
7. animals: ostriches, cows, horses, chickens running down the street, some lambs
8. football practice at the UDLA, where 1/2 of the players were on their hands & knees and the other half were walking along behind them, kicking them in the rear end [???]
9. a kid who stood up in the back seat and waved at everyone we passed, saying it was his dad and brother
10. a pulquería

on thursday night there was an earthquake off mexico´s west coast. it rocked acapulco pretty bad [about 5-6 hours away], shook buildings pretty nicely in mex city, and some people here in puebla felt it. unfortunately, i was in bambuko´s and didn´t feel a thing... maybe because i was swaying a bit on my own or maybe because it´s essentially a bamboo hut and it probably moves in the wind anyway.

friday morning, a couple of us had to go to the bimbo bread factories [yes, isn´t bimbo a funny name for a company??] for our business class. it was pretty interesting to see how bread and tortillas and donuts and hot dog buns are made, and the factories actually were pretty clean and it didn´t look like the working conditions were too awful. it was funny, though, because i had toast when i woke up that morning [made with bimbo bread] and ironically re-joined the vom bomb squad right before leaving for their headquarters. hmmm... needless to say, i didn´t eat any of the free carb-filled treats they gave us in our goodie bags por gratis!

last night was jess´s 20th bday celebration, again at bambuko´s. i actually got dressed up last night, and go figure - on the way to the bar, i walked under a tree and some bird poop landed on my shirt. [the bird´s here are far too well fed. they poop on everyone!] my drink of choice last night was called a ronaldo... hoorah for brazil fútbol love!

speaking of soccer, krista and andrea and i had a lazy movie-filled afternoon and watched ¨goal 2¨ [xoxo david beckham!] and ¨the other side of the world.¨ i also climbed the pyramid again with mallory yesterday morning. picture taking and book reading ensued at the top. it was cool to actually be acquainted enough with the town to be able to point out things like the udla campus, the intersection of forjadores and the recta, the cholula house[´s whereabouts], and the zócalo. then mallory fell down the pyramid. don´t worry, she´s okay, and no, i didn´t push her. we ate some amazing guanábana popsicles on the top too.

today pat and jess and i had a pueblan adventure - the best kind! we were supposed to go to a couple of museums so we could give presentations about them in sally´s class on tuesday. unfortunately, pat was supposed to present on the natural history museum, which we discovered to be closed after we paid 8 USD to take a taxi there. instead, we ended up wandering around the battle of puebla forts [the reason for cinco de mayo - yes, it originates right here in puebla!], which involved bushes that had been pruned into the shape of a cannon and some illegal foto-taking.

i was supposed to check out the historic UAP building [the universidad autónoma de puebla], which was still standing, but definitely not open to the public. so we wandered awhile, looking for the contemporary art museum, but instead stumbled upon a parade of teenagers wearing traditional clothing from different parts of mexico and then into the ruins of what was apparently the first franciscan convent in puebla. they made bricks there and we saw what was left of the ovens. i suppose it was interesting, but definitely not what we needed for our projects.

we tried to go out for tamales yesterday, but were unsuccessful. if you ever come to mexico, you´ll have to be patient, because businesses have very erratic hours of being open. you may WANT something, but it´s pretty likely that it won´t be open when you want it. like the fair trade coffee shop that´s never open at 9 or 10 or 11 am when i desperately need some café. maybe it opens at noon? oh, and jess and i ate molotes the other night as well, which are basically fried quesadillas filled with whatever you want and covered in crema and salsas. mine were potato and cheese and - of course - i´m in love.

apparently we only have two weeks left of classes, 1 week of finals, and then it´s back to the USA. this is very bizarre for a couple of reasons:

1. i never really though about what it would be like to return home, just about what it would be like to come here
2. i´m going to have some severe culture shock
3. i´m going to have to change my habits, including how to answer a phone, how to dispose of tp, how to say ¨excuse me¨ when passing someone in a crowd, how to signal that i agree with someone in conversation, how to signal that i disagree with someone in conversation, how to tell someone to ¨come here¨, how to bless someone when they sneeze, how to eat my food, and ... many other things. you guys are going to have to bear with me!
4. i have no idea what i´m doing this summer or where i´ll be
5. i will be tanner than you :D
6. i have no substantial travel plans after this, which is very very weird
7. i will no longer be in the minority / everyone around me will be speaking english / be able to understand what i say
8. my life will seriously be lacking in soccer. i wish this summer was the world cup instead of last summer so it´d be on all the time like here! boo.



next weekend is our last VU trip -- we´re going to a market in a town that starts with a Q about 4 hours away, but still in the state of puebla for just one day. jess and kelly and i are talking about heading to san miguel de allende, this really artsy town north of mex city, one of these weekends as well. other than that, i think i´m pretty much done travelling in mexico, which is shocking! i´m going to have to come back sometime and hit up the state of chiapas [in the south] and the yucatán area, among other things.


and then i have to pack up my room and lug it back north of the border in only 2 suitcases... ay yi yi.

los mercados mexicanos

remember when i tried to describe what markets are like here, but failed miserably to give a description that did them justice? well, if you were curious to know more, you are in luck. the other day, i was re-reading the mexico section of a book called tales of a female nomad [that i originally read on the plane ride down here] and came upon a brilliant description of a mexican market. this might be a little botched [the keyboard i am using is rather dodgy] and its a bit long, but its wonderful and i have to share...


entering the market through a side entrance, i am immediately surrounded by pinatas: mickey mouse, goofy, donald duck, and an assortment of animals and aliens dressed in their colorful paper mache skins. they are standing on the floor and hanging over my head, hundreds of donkeys and dinosaurs, cats and dragons, boys and girls, hogs and bugs. all the colors of the rainbow are swirling in front of me, swinging to the salsa music that is blasting out of unseen speakers. i am swinging, too. the brassy, percussive sound of the caribbean is contagious.

then i am out of pinatas and into avocados, shades of brown and green in massive piles on flowered oilcloth. then mounds of sweet smelling mangos fight for my attention with the pineapples. there are booths of papayas, red, yellow, and green. bananas, big and small, thin and fat. dozens of varieties of peppers and chiles fresh and dried and mounded in cubicles. tomatillos, jicama, carrots, tomatoes, and bunches of green leaves. for awhile, cilantro dominates the air, until i pass a table full of oregano. seconds later, i stop next to a table covered with yellow squash blossoms and wonder what they taste like.

there are children in the booths, babies swinging in tiny hammocks, nine year olds wooing customers, "senora, buy my watermelon. good taste. sweet."

i pass through mountains of green and red and brown and rust colored pastes, three feet high, the essence of mole sauces, redolent of cloves and garlic, oregano and cinnamon. nothing is wrapped in plastic or sealed in containers. it is all there to be smelled and seen and tasted and bought. i am surrounded by the colors, the smells, the sounds of a culture that lives life full out.

there are brains and stomachs and kidneys and tongues, feet and tails and intestines. butchers are slapping and smashing meet on huge wooden blocks, beating red blobs into tenderness. they are scissoring and chopping up yellow chickens that have been fed marigolds so their skin and flesh are gold. heads here, feet there. innards sorted.

the butchers are mincing beef and hacking pork, sharpening knives and chopping slabs. cleaving, slapping, scissoring, beating. its a spectacular percussion band, with its own peculiar instruments.

the shoppers, thick in the aisles, are carrying string and plastic and cloth bags full of newspaper wrapped packages of their purchases.

i wriggle through the crowd to peer into waist high vats of thick white cream and barrells of white ground corn dough called masa. i cannot stop smiling at the explosion of joy i have felt since i passed under the canopy of pinatas. its exciting to be exploring a world i know nothing about, discovering new smells, and moving through a scene where i am a barely noticed minority of one, swallowed up by the crowd.

- rita golden gelman

basically she said it better than i ever could. and i promise there really are that many things to see and smell and enjoy in every market ive visited. enjoy!