Kyoo 115

MesoAmerica Day Two:

Monday, April 28, 2008

Mexico City, Mexico

After a refreshing nights sleep full of police sirens and loud music (we were smack dab in the middle of Mexico City after all) we started the tour strong at Teotihuacan. The name means "The Place Where Men Become Gods". Very little is known about the original inhabitants of Teotihuacan because they left no written records. Most of what is known comes from the Maya and their interactions with them. Teotihuacan was most powerful from about AD 400 to after AD 600. But I won't bore ya'll with history stuff. In no particular order, here's the pictures:

Just being goobers.

Lunching at a little cafe just outside of Teotihuacan.  This place had the coolest decorations and an old juke box playing all sorts of music for just fives pesos!  I also got to order food in Spanish for the first time.  "Quiero tacos, por favor."  I was quite pleased.

I was excited to see that the Turtles' influence had reached far south.  This was shortly before I got to the last flavor of my icecream cone:  Tequila.  No, I did not know I had ordered tequila icecream.  It looked like it had caramel swirled in it.  It was not caramel.  Imagine that you've just licked a cat's litter box.  That's pretty much what it tasted like.  Never again.

View from our hostel at night.  The cathedral's on the left and some other random buildings are to the right.  The Zocalo is straight ahead behind those trees.

A few of my tour buddies with a cactus at Teotihuacan.  I really did touch the cactus when no one was looking and spent a majority of the rest of my time there trying to pull out microscopic needles with my non-existent fingernails.  Bad move.  It didn't look like it had pokies!

Tuna!  The fruit of the cactus.  Or, the early stages of the fruit.  They make some sweet icecream out of this stuff.

Art.  And I thought I had big hips.

I may or may not have literally climbed part of the Pyramid of the Sun...

View from the top of the Pyramid of the Moon.  The Avenue of the Dead is off to the right more and the Pyramid of the Sun is in the center back.  The picture doesn't quite do it justice.  It's one of the biggest pyramids in the world.  The whole ruins site is quite large.

Steep stairs.  Hard climb.  Killer to go down.

A serpent head on the Temple of the Plumed Serpent.  I hate snakes.

Another view of Teotihuacan.  The Pyramid of the Sun is right in the middle and the Pyramid of the Moon is off to the left in the back.

Slinky time!  Once it got going it made it quite a ways.

I loved the detail that went into these buildings.  Notice the pattern of rocks between the rocks.  It looked so cool!

And that's it for day two.  Yes, there are still tons of pictures I couldn't post.  If I ever upload them to a photobucket I'll be sure to post the link.  Until then, enjoy what you can.

Have a great day :)

Kyoo 114

My grandma was getting on me so I figured it was time to post again....

So, I'm currently shoving a mixture of Special K and Honey Nut Cheerios into my mouth and trying to get ready for work.  And it's hard.  I did Tae-Bo for the first time in a while and decided to go all out and use these resistance bands.  My arms won't listen to me anymore.

In other news:  I got an F on summer semester's report card.  Fine Arts 100.  That's right.  It was a bit of a shock but on further investigation my teacher told me she had forgotten to submit my list of attended events.  Should be fixed soon.  I kind of like it though.  It's making my transcript more diverse.

Ok.  That's all for now.  Work calls.

Have a great day :)

Kyoo 113

Job-Finding Portfolio. Almost done. Played some frisbee golf yesterday. Saw The Dark Knight on the IMAX. It was INTENSE! It was the only movie I had to think on for about a day before I decided if I liked it or not. Okay, I liked it right away but I had to decide if I wanted to see it again. Heath Ledger had the most convincing role as the Joker. The sad thing is it probably killed him. The plot was brilliant and I will finally admit that, movie-wise, Batman is definitely better than Spiderman. And Christian Bale still ranks up there in my favorite actors list.

And I love Alfred Pennyworth. Maybe I'll name a kid after him.

As for the real reason for this post, it is time for........

MesoAmerica Day One:

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Salt Lake City, UT to Mexico City, Mexico

I'd say the morning started but it never really did. It was more a continuation of Saturday. I never went to bed. I was up all of Saturday still packing and moving out of my house in preparation for the 2 a.m. departure time. 2 a.m. rolled around and I was sprinting out of the house madly trying to get to the Benson with a ginormous pack on my back and another shouldered on my front. Much thanks to Sidekick who stuck with me through the whole ordeal and got me to the bus on time.

Since I arrived, uhhhhh, right on time since my parents are probably reading this, I got an aisle seat and no sleep during the five hour ride to the Salt Lake airport. It was miserable. But I was still excited. I spent the morning saying my goodbyes to everyone on the phone and drinking out of a public drinking fountain for the last time. With my group of 40+ people, you can well imagine how much of a holdup there was at the drinking fountain as we were all filling every available container to hold us over until we got our money changed and could buy water.

Good times. Okay, I'll go into picture mode now:

Delta Flight #237 took off on time at 9:45 a.m. from Salt Lake City, UT.  I got a window seat without even trading!  By this time in the morning, I had checked for my passport no less than 17 times.  It was still there.

 

Pretty clouds....still flying high.

Just some random pictures of my first sights in Mexico City.  These were taken on the bus ride from the airport to our hostel.

Bugs are everywhere!  For reals.  This is a taxi.

Part of my travel group.  Here we're standing in the middle of Mexico City (literally right off the Zocalo) with all our luggage just screaming American tourists.  Just a little scary.....

This is the Metropolitan Cathedral as seen from my hostel window.  It was so close I felt like I could reach out and touch it.

More views from my view room at the Hostel Catedral.  It was seriously the coolest hostel.  There were younger people from all over the world staying there and the live music played way into the night.  I loved it.

Haha, this is the view from the toilet in the room.  It had shutters that opened to an inner courtyard were you could look down on the scene in the lobby.....or at anyone in the hotel who forgot to close their shutters.  Usually some pretty interesting sights.  I won't elaborate.

And that was day one.  As you can imagine, I was quite exhausted by the end of it.  Went to sleep pinching myself as I still couldn't believe I was finally in Mexico City!

Have a great day :)

Kyoo 112

Okay, so this isn't my MesoAmerica pictures yet.  If I get my "Job Finding Portfolio" done and turned in today, that's my reward.  I'll get to post my pictures.

Until then, for your viewing pleasure, I've included the following video shared with me by Ms. Swann.  I only wish I could do this on the escalators at work.  Unfortunately, they must have known about this and made the escalators criss-cross instead of parallel.

Have a great day :)

Kyoo 111

I really am going to post my MesoAmerica pictures sometime. There's just so much to do here that I never want to sit at my computer unless I have to.

San Antonio is awesome. And the people are fun. I love my internship.

Family, you're swell. Find me a job in Omaha and I just might take it.

It will sure be hard to work for any other company besides USAA though. I'm sold. And that's not just because I got to play at Six Flags on Wednesday. Or go bowling for this week. Or iceskating for next week. Or the tours and lunches and picnics. During work hours. I'll stop there. But I promise, I really do work.......

Have a great day :)

Kyoo 110

I just woke up and I feel like I've been hit by a cow.

Haha, "bovine" intervention. That just came to me.

Anyway, Happy Birthday USA! Yesterday. It was a fun day. I got to spend the morning kayaking on Blue Canyon Lake with some friends. Saw a snake. That kind of sucked. Lunch was awesome. Go Texas BBQ! I got to spend the afternoon on a boat. And behind a boat. Behind was more fun. Haven't been waterskiing or tubing in years. Which is probably why I'm feeling it this morning.

And family, I missed watching the fireworks with you. I like my hometown's fireworks. You basically know everyone that's there. You get to be entertained by all the drunk people setting off their personal fireworks beforehand. There's only a small baseball field between you and where they're lighting the big boys off at. You hear the BOOM and usually have some of the embers land on you. There's a good pause between each firework that builds anticipation. And the finale is always pretty cool. Especially the little flag they light. I miss it. The one at Randolph AFB was good but just didn't compare.

And I was attacked by ants! It was crazy. They where everywhere and biting like mad.

Have a great day :)