The Three Amigas

La abuelita ha llegado!

The past couple of weeks have certainly been eventful! My grandma and her cousin, Cathy, came to visit for eleven days, which turned out to be non-stop fun. When they first arrived we stayed in Mexico City for the four-day weekend and soaked up as much of DF as possible. Being that it's the second largest city in the world, there's definitely a lot of ground to cover and I was able to see a bunch of the tourist attractions for the first time. Over the weekend, we visited the Bellas Artes Museum, the zócalo area (the downtown plaza), the main Cathedral (which is sinking), the Palacio Nacional, which holds some of Diego Rivera's most incredible murals, the Ballet Folklórico, Coyoacán, the Frida Kahlo museum, Xochimilco (which is famous for its floating gardens) and the Dolores Olmedo Museum. Needless to say we were busy, but had a great time and ate some incredible food!



After the weekend, we headed back to Toluca, and my grandma and Cathy stayed with me at the house and even came to my school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The students were pumped to meet them and after three days I think they understand why I refer to my grandma as "la loca" (in the most endearing way). We spent Wednesday afternoon with one of my students, Alba, who is a Colombian woman I tutor and one of the sweetest people I've ever known. She's also hilariously energetic and dramatic and it didn't take long for my grandma and Cathy to pick up on her favorite expression, "OH MY GOD, Renee," which is heavily sprinkled into conversation whenever she is surprised/excited/upset/embarrassed/needs a filler. That became the phrase of choice for the remainder of the trip. Sadly enough, Alba is moving back to Columbia next week, so she had us take home a "souvenir" from our meal, in the form of a hand knit throw pillow off her couch.





We had a huge dinner party on Friday with 4 of my friends from the language faculty, the Fulbrighters from Mexico City (along with a very significant other), my roommates and one of my private tutoring students. Our long menu consisted of sopes (a Mexican specialty) with the choice of chicken, sausage and potato, or beef toppings, chicken parm, two apple pies, brownies, ice cream, beer and margaritas. It took us hours to get through the courses, but luckily with Cammie's help we were able to polish off those pies without any trouble.




The next day we headed to Taxco, a city about 2.5 hours away that is known for its silver markets. The city is sprawled across a mountain range and is full of extremely narrow roads, colonial buildings and every last antique VW bug in the country. We stayed at the hotel, Monte Taxco, which is on the edge of a cliff and is accessible via cable car. It was pretty incredible and I came home with roughly a pound's worth of silver jewelry.

Life in Mexico is wonderful. I encourage you all to visit! I just finished a very Mexican Thanksgiving and can't stop thinking about how lucky I am to be here this year. I miss you all but I'm starting to realize just how much I'm going to miss this place.