And four and a half months later...

My last entry marked the end of my first year in Mexico.  After I signed off, I decided to give myself a break from journaling.  I felt like I was telling the same story over and over again and, upon reading my last entries, I'm sure I was right.  I was badly in need of inspiration.  

The break was intended to last for a few weeks.  I never imagined it would stretch on for four and a half months.  But today I felt the itch to tell you something and when I opened my journal I saw the date of the last entry, April 17.

I tried to find a word in Spanish to register my surprise, and found after a bit of searching in my Spanish resources that Mexicans generally use the word "wow."  It's not very poetic, but it works, so, Wow!  You and I have some catching up to do.

Case in point - the scene on the other side of my window today is of a fountain in the center of which sits a statue of Cibeles (the Roman goddess Ceres) driving a chariot drawn by a pair of lions.  The fountain and statuary are copies of a famous monument in Madrid.  It was reproduced here as a gift to the people of the Mexican capitol by the city's Spanish expatriate community.

My view is from a modern, glass and steel apartment on the 9th floor of the Torre Cibeles on Madrid Plaza, a public square (really a circle) dedicated to the Cibeles monument.  From my vantage point, Mexico City stretches out in every direction and feels every bit like one of the largest cities in the world. I can see Zona Rosa and Polanco, the major business districts of the capitol, and miles and miles of urban sprawl reaching all the way up onto the foothills of the mountains and volcanic peaks that surround the city.

From here I feel a million miles away from San Pancho where, last I heard, heavy rains washed out the bridge on mainstreet, the only route in or out of the pueblo.  The Highway 200 bridge over the Ameca River on the way to Puerto Vallarta also washed out, but that means nothing to San Pancho as long as the bridge from the pueblo to the highway is gone.  Pictures I've found online feature friends staring at the gap between the pueblo and the Highway, with water rushing below.  I worry about my friends in San Pancho and wonder what will become of them if food, propane, and other supplies run low before a new connection is established with the highway.  But here, rain is but a minor inconvenience.  It falls almost daily in the afternoon, but only briefly, as if on a schedule meant to clean the air and the streets in preparation for the next day.

The Torre is the second apartment building I've lived in here in el D.F.  The first sat between the Parque Mexico and the Parque Espana in La Condesa, an adjoining neighborhood just south of the historic center of Mexico City.  For weeks now, my life in Mexico has revolved around walks in the neighborhood parks, visits to Parque Chapultepec and the monument to the heroic child soldiers of the revolution, the Museo de Arte Moderno, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museo Rufino Tamayo, La Zona Rosa, weekly trips to the neighborhood tianguis for produce and meat, Carlos Fuentes, Roberto Bolano, Michel Foucault, and lunches at taco stands and fondas and, on occasion, some of the finer restaurants of the city.

In my kitchen I have a bag of Chapulines, a beloved food of Mexico.  Chapulines are fried grasshoppers dusted with chili.  These particular little critters want to be made into a salsa to have with quesadillas of hand-pressed blue corn tortillas fresh from the market and raw milk Oaxaca cheese from a nearby street vendor.  And on my list of things to do are trips to the Mercado San Juan, a place famous for wonderful culinary ingredients, Turibus rides around town, a visit to La Casa Azul, famous as the former home of Frida Kahlo,  a tour of the Trotsky museum complete, I'm sure, with the requisite ogling at the bullet holes in the wall, an excursion to the Lagunilla flea market and its acres of antiques and junk and antique junk, and language lessons.

How I got here is a long story.  I won't try to tell it all at once.  There's too much to tell all at once.  Instead, I'll go month by month to keep the entries bite-sized.  But not yet.  Come visit me again and I'll tell you about April.  I promise that by the end of the month, you'll be all caught up and you'll learn a little bit about Mexico City in the process.