Hotel Salmones Jalapa

Wow.

What an amazing day. If any of you are looking for vacation spots in Mexico, allow me to suggest Puebla!

So my current host family's mission was to make Ronja and I happy. No seriously. That's what our host dad told us at the beginning of the week. His way of making us happy was through food. We've had a different type of food - either from Puebla or Mexico in general - for breakfast and dinner every day since we arrived.

And he found out that I like ...

Hello friends and Happy Sunday!

So I have gotten into the habit of starting entires and not finishing them :( I start an entry, have every intention of posting the entry on the blog, and then fall asleep... sometimes with the laptop on my lap in the morning! I wrote this blog on Friday after the show.

The title of this blog is a song in our show. I know I've mentioned it in earlier blogs. That title seems appropriate as I reflect on my community ...

... some popular children's characters. We also ate some great Mexican snacks. It seems that all typical Mexican food has some sort of meat in it.


I've definitely been getting my protein!


Then we went to a nearby high school and met our host families! My roommate, Ronja, is from Germany and is one of the most funny people I have ever met. She also has curly red hair - like me! - and wanted to tell our host family that we were cousins.


We ...

Puebla est la capitale de l'Etat du même nom, située à 110 km de Mexico, encerclée par les volcans Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl et Malinche. C'est la quatrième plus grande ville du Mexique, où se situe l'usine Volkswagen qui produisait les célèbres ...

... music the next night, also loads of fun, saw some of our friends from the bike ride there, people here in Xalapa are really friendly. Last saterday Pablo and I went to Coatopec for the day, rather uneventful except I can say I now have tried brain. This really nice Siñora talked me into trying sesos, pig brain empenadas , it was interesting to say the least. After that Pablo and I went to check out the ...

... Sunday morning bike ride, this was my favorite person though, his parrot goes on bike rides with him, . We split into 2 groups (unfortunately the parrot guy went with the other group) and about 20 people, including Byron, Pablo, y yo went a backway to Xico, a 4 hour ride on backroads, singletrack trails and steep hills journey from Xalapa, we also stopped a lot to let eveyone catch up as the skill level of the group ...

... thought they did but the cars did not agree. i was told pedestrians do have the right of way but it is not well enforced as like many other traffic laws, unless an accident happens. Speed limits- are set very low and nobody follows them, everybody knows but no one does anything. Speed bumps - are EVERYwhere in the city and they are HUGE! Like your whole car goes up on it then back down, more like raised setions of road than bumps.

After two hours on the bus we got to the pretty city of Puebla. It is the most Spanish Mexican town with painted tiles (Talavera) all over and many cathedrals including the Templo de Santo Domingo's Capilla del Rosario, which has so much stucco work the cathedral was absolutely dripping in gold. Looking at all the grand churches in Mexico, it's hard not to imagine how much money has been spent on them, and wonder ...

... most Murrains (most of whom have fincas that bring in a lot of money from the coffee). Many from this group themselves noted that the Murrains didn't seem to understand that the things they were giving out had been saved up for over a year and people worked very hard to bring these things here. And of course, this group was all light colored in skin so the "gringo" giving things away was all the more reinforced. The sad part is they had a few things stolen and I think that ...

Hola!!! Well we made it here safe and sound after an interesting experience with United Airlines and a long wait in the queues at LAX! We're now recovering from the jet lag which wiped us out a bit. Mexico City is loud, colourful, dirty, fascinating and frantic! It really is so different to anything we have ever encountered before. We're enjoying ourselves immensely so far! Yesterday we spent the day ...