EuroDash2008

Everyone is home now, safe, sound, and sleeping in to catch up on all the lost sleep from this whirlwind trip. It's been a blast. No one was pickpocketed, no one missed a transfer bus or train or flight ... Success!

We got to end our trip in the extremely beautiful and friendly city of Prague, which--like Vienna--is one of the hosts for the European Cup 2008 (or Euro2008), so we got some exposure to football (soccer) frenzy. The beautiful old square created quite the contrast for a huge soccer-ball tent, giant screens, and port-o-potties.

On our last evenings, we discussed some of our favorite memories from the trip, and our favorite cities. Most of us agreed that Florence was among the best of the cities we visited, though not the most livable (too touristy, too small). That was at a point in our trip when we weren't too tired, and most everything went right there. Plus, it was small enough to navigate without public transport. And beautiful. Dr. Zellmer took a group of students on a walk through the countryside while Ms. H went wandering on the north side of the city with Grainne, Cate, and Michaela. Both great ways to end the day in Florence.

For my part, London and Prague remain the most livable of the cities we visited, while Florence and Venice -- and other Italian cities I've been to -- are the most fun for tourists. So pretty that no matter how talented you are with a camera, you will get gorgeous pictures. Vienna was the most lack-luster: just another big city, not particularly pretty or friendly, but with a nice palace (Shoenbrunn gardens were definitely the best part of that trip).

We also discussed what, if anything, the U.S. does better than Europe. The list is short:

1. Free water in restaurants and free refills. (Fighting dehydration was unfortunately one of the themes of the trip.)

2. Perhaps more school and job flexibility, though we didn't get much chance to discuss this with Europeans.

3. Free toilets!

4. ... I know there was something else, but I forgot!


What Europe does better than the U.S. was easier to come up with:

1. Pedestrian walkways in its cities. Much easier to get around on foot.

2. Bread. The kinds and options are so much better than in the States!

3. Cheese. And fizzy water, according to Dr. Z. And most food-related items. (Good food is available in the States, just expensive. Not the norm as it seems here.)

4. Public transportation and pedestrian walkways.

5. Dance clubs, and other opportunities for teens to have fun and mingle outside of the shopping mall.

6. Architechture - the new and the old.

7. Cafes and squares on which one can relax and people-watch.

And so EuroDash2008 comes to a close.

Mexico City Take II

Mexico City has an eclectic beauty. Buildings of different eras and styles are piled haphazard on top of one another; the effect is one of vibrancy. I took some time trying to capture the night skyline from the top floor of our hostel to get it right:


Hostal Moneda, we were surprised to discover, offers ready-made tours of most of the places we wanted to see (with English speaking guides, which is key!). At first we were wary of being herded from one site to another like gaping cattle; we like to envision ourselves as nonconformists. But the groups were small and fun, and allowed us to get to know our fellow world-traveler hostelers, most of whom were on extended vacations and thus asked us where we were "going next" after Mexico City. Um...back to work? Not to Guatemala or the Yucatan instead, like some people...Hmph.

The first whirl-wind day tour took us from the hostel to Tlatelolco, another site of excavated Aztec ruins, and the 17th century Templo de Santiago (Santiago Church), built using the Aztec-hewn volcanic rock. Some Aztec symbols are discernable in the stones on the Cathedral. I love the irony.

The site is also unfortunately infamous for the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968, when police and military shot student demonstrators ... and their families and passers-by ... only ten days before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Anywhere from 200 to 1000 people were killed, but official police report is still apparently "4 dead, 20 wounded " (Wikipedia). Apparently, the "incident" is still under investigation.

The site of the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968.

After that cheery start, we continued north towards the site of Juan Diego's vision of the Virgin Mary, which also happens to be a hill once used for the worship of the Aztec female deity, Tonantzin. Coincidence?

Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican who converted to Catholicism. He received the vision of the Virgin in December of 1531, when on his way to church: "The Lady asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumárraga, that she wanted a 'teocalli,' a sacred little house, to be built on the spot where she stood" (Wiki.) When the Bishop refused to believe Diego's tale, Diego returned to the hill and received a second vision, in which the dark-skinned Virgin was surrounded by roses. He gathered some of the roses (a plant not native to Mexico) in his humble cloak and brought them to the Bishop. As he let the roses fall on the floor at the Bishop's feet, his cloak revealed a painted an image of the Virgin, surrounded by roses and a golden glow. The Virgen de Guadalupe has been Mexican Catholics' savior ever since. Her image is certainly hard to escape.

The Cloak on High

Excuse the blurriness of the above photo, but we were on airport-style moving walkways intended to enhance our religious experience. (The walkways were put in to keep bystanders from camping out underneath the relic.)

Two of the Virgin of Guadalupe churches, New and Old

In late afternoon, after it had gotten nice and toasty outside, we drove 45 minutes northeast of the city to Teotihuacan, the Aztec name for the abandoned pyramid city (or Tee-o-ti-rock-on, as my friends at the hostel--Raj and Steve--termed it). We know very little about the people who built the city--at least, Wikipedia and my tour guide knew very little, so I can't fill you in here. We do know that "earliest buildings at Teotihuacan date to about 200 BCE" and that the city was abandoned "sometime during the 7th or 8th centuries," also for unknown reasons (Wikipedia, my friend). The city would have been painted and decorated, and what we see now is only a skeleton.

At Teotihuacan, looking down the Avenue of the Dead
toward the Temple of the Sun

On the Temple of the Sun, facing north to the Temple of the Moon

Miša was a little nervous about climbing the pyramids at first, but they proved quite manageable. Please note that there is NO SHADE ANYWHERE, however! We looked a little lobsterish the next day, when we got in the tour van again and headed south to Coyoacan, Frida Kahlo's neighborhood.

Our hyperactive tour guide, Gerson, kept us hopping and bobbing along with self-interrupted stories of the criminals of Mexico's past. He once stopped a man praying in church to ask him whether Benito Juarez--former president of Mexico--was "bueno o malo" (good or bad). The man responded, "Bueno, claro que si!" (Good, of course!) Gerson immediately turned to us and said, "See what I mean! They've all been brainwashed!" Unfortunately, the man understood English.

I've been in love with Frida ever since I saw the Salma Hayek movie version of her life--Miša too. And of course, as feminists, we HAD to visit the "blue house," which belonged to her parents and is where she spent a considerable amount of time recuperating from back surgeries. She and her husband, the famous Diego Rivera, spent some time there before moving to a house they'd built on their own. It was here that she had an affair with Leon Trotsky.

Frida Kahlo's House

For lunch, we headed over to Xochimilco, a borough of Mexico City that contains canals; it serves as reminder that the city was once surrounded by water. Now, of course, it is the tourist spot of tourist spots, and the canals are overrun with boats carrying drunk college students, gaping tourists, and fun-lovin' mariachi bands.

The Boats of Xochimilco

Dancing to the tune of Mariachi music.
(Please note that our van driver had decided to give Miša a "hand" with the hip movements.)

Our last full day in "the City" was spent tracking down every last Diego Rivera mural we could find and nosily wandering into guarded courtyards, smiling cheerfully at the befuddled guards. The best murals were at the offices of the Secretary of Public Education, and comprised the walls of three stories of the complex.

part of the Diego Rivera Mural in the Secretaria de Educacion Publica,
'Death of a Capitalist'

We dragged along a man we'd picked up at Hostal Moneda: Ofer, who was making a leisurely trip through Latin America, starting in Costa Rica and ending...well, that remains to be seen. He's currently stretched upon my couch, contemplating a U.S. tour.

Ofer patiently translated for us, shared his Jugos Canada smoothies, and posed for our goofy shots in good humor. He also manages to get the best fortune cookie fortunes ever: "You have had a long term stimulation relative to business."

Sculptura de Ofer

And so our blissful whirlwind tour of Mexico City drew to a close. I'll leave you with a picture of the dancers and drummers who gathered outside the Cathedrale every afternoon and evening to shake their booties on the sidewalk. Hasta la vista, baby!

The "Aztec" dancers outside the Catedrale

La Ciudad de Mexico

Miša and I had originally intended to spend second spring break in Nairobi, Kenya, visiting Pat, Reshma, and David. Symone, my senior-class advisee, had set up an internship with an orphanage in Nairobi, and we wanted to visit her there as well. Then came the presidental elections of December 27th. Within two days, it became clear that none of us would go to Kenya this year. I was in Berlin at the time, anxiously poring over the news every day with Ali and Dru, feeling my heart slowly sink into my stomach and waiting for news from Pat and Resh -- thankfully both okay, but holed up in their homes and unable to get internet access for some days.

As time neared for break, Miša and I began consulting with Mark about Mexico. I'd been to Nogales numerous times, and Rocky Point (Puerto Peñasco) once, but those don't really count. :) At Rocky Point, I spent most of the time in the water or drinking beers and listening to Alan play guitar, and hardly knew I was in Mexico. Miša and I decided we needed to take advantage of our nearness to the border, especially since neither of us are sure how much longer we'll be in the Southwest. We knew nothing about Mexico City that we hadn't gleaned from the movie Frida or our own wild imaginations!

Weirdly, neither of us seemed to understand how little English is spoken in Mexico. I mean, Duh. There are plenty of Mexicans in *Tucson* who don't speak English, and I should have made the connection, especially when Luke, our neighbor, shoved a few Spanish phrase books and dictionaries in my direction. They came in handy when Miša and I tried to figure out which fruits to request at the local fruit smoothie operation.

Jugos Canada

So when we arrived at the airport after approx. six hours' bouncing (e.g., "flying"), not having eaten anything, we were admittedly a little slow on the uptake. Somehow we were bullied into a taxi, the driver managed to read our map, we'd only tipped about four people on our way over, and we ended up in the general area of Hostal Moneda without getting into a car accident. I attribute this entirely to an act of providence. Signals? Pshaw! Those are for fools. Just cut right in!

Anyway, we were alive. We wandered out past the cathedral in search of some grub still open past 10 p.m., and walked past a giant open area near the central square filled with what looked like piles of rubble . So I said, "What's that doing there?" to which the wise Miša replied, "I think those are ruins."

Templo Mayor, Ruins of the main temples of the Aztec city of Tenotchtitlan

These were the first part of Mexico City we explored the following morning, as they were just past our front door. We managed to feel like we learned a thing or two about the Aztecs from the posted signs there, namely that 1) the Aztecs' most powerful god, the sun (Huitzilopochtli, a name that just trips off the tongue), had killed his sister, the moon, in order to rise, and so they had to make a human sacrifice every morning in order for the sun to rise, and 2) they were really into skull decorations.


We also learned that the Aztecs had ruled for a relatively short amount of time before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived--from 1325 to 1519--and had chosen to build their empire on an island because, supposedly, they saw an eagle with a snake in its mouth resting on top of a prickly pear cactus. That, and the water made for good defense systems and year-round farming.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the Centro Histórico, ducking in and out of numerous Iglesias (churches) and the main Catedrale on the Zocalo (central square). And we saw many "minor" signs that la Ciudad is sinking into its sandy foundations.


No margaritas had been imbibed when this was taken, though they were soon after. :) Part II to follow....

Lazarus rises

Reports of this blog's death have been greatly exaggerated...

Now that I've turned in term grades (no more paper grading! no more paper grading!) and am nearing the end of finals and AP Review, I have a moment to reflect on the year. It's been a tough one. I essentially gave the director my early resignation in November, at a point when I was not only incredibly frustrated with the direction the school was (is) taking, but also feeling myself stagnate, intellectually and emotionally. I applied to international secondary school teaching positions, and was in the process of narrowing my search--Brazil? India? Switzerland?--when I had a change of heart.

First, I realized that I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to Misa and my other friends in Tucson, even if I was ready to run out of Tucson itself. Second, a group of students approached me and asked that I stick around to teach them the following year--and Julia asked me to stay. Finally, I had to admit that trying to move this summer would be INSANE. On the last day of school, I'm flying to Austin, Texas for Aurora's wedding, returning just in time to fly to London to start a two-week jaunt through Europe with Mark and fifteen of my high school students, then meeting Barbara in Spain for 10 days, then starting Bread Loaf at Oxford. AND beginning my doctoral program applications. So a delay seemed appropriate.

Pretty much the only thing I remember from the fall besides this job turmoil is the trip that Misa, Susannah, and I took over October Break to New Mexico. We had only three days and an unstable itinerary that included a spur of the moment decision to drive all the way to the south-east of New Mexico in order to see Carlsbad Caverns. I was dubious of this decision until we got there, smelt the bat guano, and spent hours wandering through the underground maze of Carlsbad. The pictures don't do it justice, partly because I hadn't yet figured out how to work "night" photography.

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico





The previous night we'd gotten a little off track in Silver City, and came to the campground extremely late, only realizing as the road continued to curve sharply upward in the pitch darkness that the campground was near the top of a mountain! And, having become spoiled Arizonans, we had almost no warm clothing with us. We stepped out of the car and promptly pulled on every clothing item we'd brought, then huddled together and watched our breath freeze until we fell asleep.

On the way back, we detoured over to White Sands national park, and rolled around in the sand for a while:


White Sands, New Mexico







The sand is very hot on the surface, but surprisingly cool about three inches below, so much of our time was spent creating cool hollows for our bodies. White Sands is beautiful, but there's only so much you can do with sand when there is no water nearby to splash around in, and so we hit the road again soon after.

The Czechmobile



Our last stop was at a "ghost town," what used to be a small, thriving silver-mining town near the railway. Stein, NM is owned by one family, and they keep up the mercantile shop, now selling tourist paraphenalia:



Just like Ma and Pa's place back in the day. Yar.

And as we headed back across the state line, we paused on the lonely stretch of highway to take one last shot: