Saturday, I had my first micro-bus ride with the girls and their friends. It was a bumpy, leaky, squishy ride blaring such favourites as "Like a Prayer" and "Whip It" that I couldn't help but sing (or think) along to. It was my first true glimpse at what I would subjectively label "the real Mexico": street scenes like I've never seen before and that would take too long to try to describe [see above "So, how is Mexico?" 2003-10-06 for the view from the Farca Luna's window of the squatter's village across the road]. From the micro-bus, we hopped the Metro to the city centre, where we visited the Zocalo (town square) and the Cathedral (briefly - i got in trouble for taking a picture, after we'd asked if i could, because i didn't see the no flash signs) and outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes. At the Zocalo, I watched the conchero dancers, who dress in ornate costumes of feathers and shells and perform a ritualistic dance to the rhythm of a sole drum, beating resoundingly in the background. I took lots of pictures [one of which is posted to the right].

Also at the Zocalo was a gathering hosted by Catholics for Choice ("Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir"). This surprised me because: 1) I didn't know that abortion wasn't legal in Mexico (I guess I'd never really thought about it); and 2) because it would never have occurred to me that a major pro-choice rally would be spearheaded by a Catholic-based group whose slogan (“María de Guadalupe esta presente en nuestras vidas, en nuestras cuerpos y en nuestro derecho a decidir” which roughly translates to “María of Guadalupe is present in our lives, in our bodies and in our right to choose”) is unapologetically religious in a traditional/non-new-age sort of way.

Saturday evening I hung out a bit with Sara and her friends in another apartment in their complex, but wasn't really feeling like drinking tons of Corona (done "properly" with limon and salt and this chile-salt mixture) and listening to loud music with a bunch of teenagers (no offence), so I returned to the Farca Luna's place to look into heading to a dinner I'd been invited to across town. Unfortunately, after about an hour of alternately talking logistics with the Farca Lunas and Alexis, the Columbian co-worker hosting the dinner, we collectively decided that it would be unfeasible for me to leave, as sitio cabs are very expensive at night and street cabs very unsafe. Needless to say, I ended up staying the night, actively missing the mobility I have in Canadian cities like Toronto, where the public transit runs all night and is still pretty secure.

Sunday, we left the city! Isaac (the brother, 26) drove his father's car, with Sara, Tere, Isaac's girlfriend, and me as passengers. A bunch of other people came in different vehicles. On the way to our destination, we stopped to buy water and went to the washroom in a wood/tin-roof shack behind this little store for 2 pesos apiece. The toilet needed to be flushed manually by pouring in water from a barrel outside the "stall." It was a little like something out of a movie, right beside a turkey pen and a horse stall, with a beautiful scenic back-drop. My camera had run out of batteries the night before, and damn was I upset I'd wasted them on movies/pictures of the Zocalo, which i can visit anytime. Ah, so many missed photo ops...

We went to this amazing green mountainous area called Marcesa (?) and hung out and listened to music and ate yummy quesadillas made with blue corn tortillas (well, I did; they ate meat they'd brought to bar-b-que). I even rented a horse for half an hour for 50 pesos (5 American dollars) and got a quick gallop up the hillside. It started raining while I was riding and got really cold, but we still hung out for another hour or so, all of us shivering while playing riddle/whodunit guessing games (i.e., "Jack and Jill are found dead in a pool of water, surrounded by broken glass. How did they die?"). Overall, it was really fun, despite the language barrier.

General observation: people here seem to lack what i would refer to as survival instinct/health-consciousness, at least relative to what we (possibly stuffy, overly obsessive) North Americans take as normal. It's amazing. Everyone smokes (inside homes, around kids, etc.!); how many people they stuff in/on vehicles is astounding; people regularly drink and drive and supposedly sober drivers could fool me.

Another thing: the Mexican equivalent of Wonder Bread is called Bimbo! In my opinion, there's something about the (supposedly) accidental association of the word "bimbo" and white bread that's just funny.