But of course, there was still time for many other exciting activities! Mid-November, our program had an Alice in Wonderland Un-Birthday Party. We all had so much fun dressing up on Halloween, so we asked Patricia if we could have another program sponsored costume party. This costume party was a little trickier though, since there was a limited number of costume ideas, but everyone looked fabulous! We had fun a lot of fun dancing, watching the movie and eating the un-birthday cake. Below are some pictures:
Me (the queen of hearts), Rouwenna (cheshire cat), Sarah (the rabbit), Cassie (mad hatter) and Naihomy (wearing a home made crown and belt of cards!)
Jenna and I had a lot of fun turning Patricia's stairway into a "rabbit hole" that everyone had to pass through to get to the party.
During the party, Max got it in his head that he want to go to Mexico City the next day for the "inauguration" of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. If you haven't been following the Mexican political scene for the past few months, back in July, the results of the presidential elections were very close, and Calderon, the candidate for the conservative PAN party, was declared the winner. However, Lopez-Obrador, the leftist PRD candidate, and many of his followers believe there was fraud and that Obrador is the rightful winner. There were protests all summer, but Calderon was still declared the winner. Obrador maintains that he is the rightful president, and to demonstrate this, he decided to hold his own inauguration ceremony on Monday November, 20, the Day of the Revolution, which celebrates the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
So at the Alice in Wonderland party, which was Sunday night, Max comes up to me and tells me he wants to go to the inauguration the next day in Mexico city, and he doesn't want to go alone, and would I go with him? My first thought was yes, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I want to go. But my next thought was no, I have way too much homework. I was looking forward to a Monday off from school to catch up on a lot of work I was behind on, and going away for the day seemed like a bad idea. But the once in a lifetime opportunity line of thought won out and I agreed to go to Mexico City the next day with Max.
We caught a 7am bus to be in the city by 9am, since we didn't know when Obrador was going to speak. By 9:30 we were standing in the zocalo, the central square in the city. I was pretty amazed at how easy the whole process was- I always assumed it would be really difficult and confusing to go to Mexico city on my own, but Max and I just showed up at the bus station that morning, got tickets five minutes before our bus left, and then took a cheap taxi from the bus station to the zocalo- it was stunningly simple to get from our houses in Puebla to the center of Mexico city.
Our first stop in the Zocalo was McDonalds for coffee and warmth. There was a cold streak that week, and max and I had not dressed appropriately to be outside in it all day. After breakfast, we saw that the parade we had heard about was passing through the zocalo so we went out to watch. It was pretty similar to any American parade- marching bands, dignitaries 
in old fashion cars, masses of kids in karate suits- and it made us both a little nostalgic for home. But there were of course Mexican twists, my favorite being the trucks of the luchador union, complete with wrestlers in masks and costumes. I also got really excited because there were two different rowing clubs that passed by, so now I know that they do row in Mexico! I was so happy to see boats, Max took my picture.
After some parade watching, we got cold again, so we headed back into McDonalds to warm up and get a snack. When we ventured back outside, we asked a woman when Obrador was supposed to speak, and she told us 4pm, and we later saw a sign that said the inauguration was to begin at 3pm, so we had a lot of time to kill before then. We decided to walk down to the "monument of the revolution". We did this for two reasons: one, because it was the "day of the revolution" so we figured there would be some activity at the "monument of the revolution," and two, because when we were in Mexico City for our orientation our hotel was next to the monument, so we were familiar with that part of the city. It was a nice walk and we managed to kill most of the early afternoon that way. At the monument, we had a great "only in Mexico" moment. There was some kind of military academy putting on a display, which included lots of pyramid forming and back flips over students holding machetes. Also, on the walk back, we got stopped by a group of Mexican high school students with a video camera who had to do interviews for their English class. It took a lot longer than we thought it would, but it was pretty entertaining!
By the time we finished our interviews, people were streaming down every side street that led to the zocalo. However, when we got to the zocalo we were still able to get a spot relatively close to the stage. If Max had his way, we would have pushed our way all the way to the front, but I have developed a fear of "multitudes" since the independence day celebration in Veracruz, so I was weary of getting ourselves too enveloped in the crowd. I was also a little nervous because this was a pretty big political demonstration. Everything was supposed to be really peaceful, but I couldn't help but entertain thoughts like, "If something violent happens, how easy will it be to escape this crowd?" There were helicopters circling above, which didn't help my nerves, but the whole thing turned out to be really peaceful. I was pleasantly surprised by the mood of the gathering. As far as I could see in all directions, the zocalo was filled with people, yet no one was pushing and shoving. Instead of anger that their candidate hadn't been declared the official winner, there was a spirit of hope and warm hearted support for Obrador. Such a pleasant atmosphere was even more surprising considering the conditions: it was absolutely freezing out (though considerably warmer in the middle of the crowd) and everyone was standing shoulder to shoulder for about two hours before Obrador came out to speak. Max and I got to the zocalo at 2:45 and Obrador didn't speak until 5pm. We were only entertained by the sights and sounds of the crowd for so long, so we tried to amuse ourselves by playing 20 questions, but we were both so awful it at that we only played for 20 minutes or so.
But all the waiting was well worth it. Before I even arrived in Mexico, I was following the elections in the newspaper, and it all became real when we arrived in Mexico city for orientation and saw the city covered in protest camps. In Puebla, the Obrador protests have dominated the news, class discussions, and our family dinner tables, so to hear the man behind all of this speak live and in person, amongst hundreds of thousands of his supporters, was a pretty incredible experience. The ceremony was conducted just as if it were an actual presidential inauguration- we sang the national anthem, Obrador presented his cabinet, and then he outlined his plan for the presidency, which focused mainly on alleviating poverty and eliminating fraud. Since he isn't actually president, what he and his cabinet are really going to do is act as a watchdog group for the Calderon administration. 
In the center of the photo is the Mexican flag, and to the right is a PRD (Obrador's party) flag, and in the bottom half of the picture is the zocalo filled with people.
This is the view of the stage from where we were standing.
I made Max take a picture of me to show that I was actually there.
This is about the best shot I got of Obrador- it's a little fuzzy because of the zoom, but he's the guy at the pedestal directly under the big yellow flag.
The only point when things got a little hairy was as we were trying to leave the zocalo. Since everyone was leaving at the same time, I had some flashbacks to the crowd in Veracruz. There we so many people trying to leave the zocalo at the same time, Max and I had to pretty much surrender our free will and just be moved by the mob. By the time we shouldered out way to the edge of the zocalo, we realized that all the streets leading away were just as jam packed, so we decided to take a break and get some dinner. It was an excellent decision, because after dinner we felt well-fed, well-rested, and ready to take on the last leg of our journey.
In Mexico City, it is strongly advised that you don't hail a cab off the street because they are notorious for kidnappings and robberies. What you have to do is call a company you know is legit to ask for a cab, or go to a restaurant or hotel and they can arrange for a secure taxi for you. Max and I decided to walk to the hotel we stayed at for orientation to ask them to call a cab for us, but we hit another hotel along the way, and were at the bus station in no time, and back in Puebla by 10pm. I felt very proud of us for executing a trip to Mexico City and back for a massive political gathering without a hitch!
The Monday in Mexico City was the start of a big week. On Tuesday morning, I frantically wrote a paper (the one I was planning on writing on Monday before I decided to blow it off for Obrador!) for my 1pm class. That afternoon, I went over to Patricia's to help make pies for thanksgiving, but really all I did was cut apples and chat! Then Thursday was thanksgiving so we all went over to Patricia's for dinner. It of course wasn't anything like home, but I have come to think of my friends in the program as my family in Mexico, so it was really nice to sit down to dinner with them. And the pies were absolutely delicious!
On Friday, we decided we should all go out together, so we went out for dinner and dancing. We went to a salsa club and had a great time. I went with Israel, who, like me, really doesn't know how to salsa, but we had a lot of fun watching that fabulous salsa dancers and just goofing around on the dance floor.
Don't remember what I did Saturday, but whatever it was, it was low key, because on Sunday Rouwenna and I ran a 12k! The whole event was a giant road race and you could choose to run a 6k, 12k, half marathon or a marathon. Our track coaches told us about it, and since I hadn't yet done any kind of running competition, I thought I would give it a try and Rouwenna agreed to do it with me. We knew we could run 6k, because we'd done about that much in practice, but we weren't sure about 12k, which is 7.46 miles. We decided we'd at least run 6k, and if we felt good after that, we'd run to our neighborhood (which was along the course and about 9k from the start) and if we still felt good, we'd go for the 12k. We ended up feeling good enough to keep going at each of our checkpoints, so we finished the whole 12k, and we did it in under an hour. We were inedibly proud of ourselves for finishing so fast- it was way better than we ever thought we could. Our bubble was sightly burst the next day at track practice when a lot of the guys were saying it was closer to a 10k, but even if it was, we still made good time, and we finished. Also, it was a lot of fun to take part in a community activity- it wasn't something facilitated by the program, it was just us completely integrated with the larger athletic community of Puebla. I'm horrible at judging numbers, but I'd say there were thousands of people of all ages and abilities participating. It was also fun to see the city from a different perspective. A lot of the route was one I take almost everyday on the bus, so it was neat to see that I could walk it (or run it!) if I wanted to. Rouwenna and I joked that we should start running around the city because it would go faster than taking the bus!
So that was November. Actually, on the last day of November, I left for a trip to Chiapas, but more on that in the next post...
No comments:
Post a Comment