Pancakes and Shopping

On Friday, we went to the parque ecologico with Pablo, which is a giant park with a lake and a running track and some playground equipment and park benches. It's a good thing that we went with Pablo because we would have never found it otherwise. We had a fun time exploring around and then went to a restaurant nearby that Pablo likes. I ordered mozzerella sticks, which I know isn't the most Mexican thing in the world, but they served it with chipotle sauce instead of marinara, so I think it counts :) Later that day, we went to get some churros and hot chocolate from our favorite churreria. It's been rainy and cold the past few days because of the tropical storm that passed over Veracruz yesterday and the leftovers of it are lingering around and making our days gray, so we decided some warm hot chocolate was the perfect way to spend the late afternoon. I also had some down time to work on my paper, which was nice to move forward some more on that.

Saturday we spent the day exploring Puebla. We started off by getting our first breakfast out at a place called Bajo el Cielo de Jalisco, which had pancakes! They were amazing, fluffy pancakes, better than most I've had back in the states. I also ordered a warm drink called champurrado, which is a gray, dense drink made from corn and chocolate. It was very strange and I'd never had anything like it, and even while I was drinking it I wasn't quite sure what it was. It was delicious though! Here's a wikipedia link to it for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champurrado. Later, we went to a park that we'd heard about called San Francisco, which is a beautiful garden with all kinds of perfectly maintained colorful plants and carefully constructed stone walkways. We wandered around there for a little bit and then went to check out the markets and noticed it was going to rain, so we scurried back to the zocolo to find a place to watch the Mexico v Japan soccer game (which Mexico won!). We decided that we were going to treat ourselves to a nice dinner, so went back to the apartment to get ready and ended up at Vittorio's, a nice Italian restaurant in the zocolo. They have an upstairs with a balcony and we had a beautiful view of the square at night along with our wonderful Italian meal. In the spirit of mixing Mexican and Italian, I had a chile relleno appetizer and a pizza. Perfect meal! Later that night, we went to see Monsters University, which was dubbed and we actually followed. In line, we met a 10 year old boy who was fascinated with our American-ness and our blonde-ness and our ability to speak English. He timidly came up to us and asked if we knew Spanish and when he found at the we did and he could talk to us about our lives in the United States, he was so excited. We talked to him for the whole 20 minutes before the movie and he even followed us to our seats and sat with us during the movie. He even wanted to take a picture with us after. He was so curious and I'm glad that we could make his night by being his American friends!

On Sunday, Elanor came into town to go shopping at the markets with us. We went to all the ones that we know, which was about 4 or 5. They all have different things and you never know what you're going to find, so we had a lot of fun meandering around each one. We got some lunch at one of the markets as well, and tried chanclas, which are beans and cheese and sauce surrounded by a doughy corn bread and are amazing, recommended to us by our house mom and Frank. We all spent more money than we should have on gifts for others and for ourselves, but had a great time and ended up with some really unique things! I even bought a sombrero, but realized that the only way that I could possibly get in home would be to wear it, so I'm excited to the be that American girl in the sombrero in the Mexico City Airport. Should be interesting! We were exhausted after about 5 hours of shopping so we ended up at our churreria in the zocolo and relaxed with some churros and hot chocolate. (Not sure what I'm going to do when I get back home and realize that churros and hot chocolate aren't abundantly available; I've become quite attached). After catching up and chatting for a while, since we hadn't seen each other in a few days, Elanor hopped in a cab and Miranda and I continued home . I could tell that I was starting to come down with something, because my nose was stuffy and my throat was sore. I took a long nap and we went and got some warm pozole soup for dinner. I went to bed early hoping for the best!

I woke up this morning still not at 100%, so we took the day off of going to campus and instead are at a little coffee shop working on our projects from here. I'm just hoping that I can feel better enough by dinner time tonight so that Miranda and I can get cemitas from one of the many street vendors outside the Lucha Libre arena on Monday nights. Our plan is to go the one with the longest line because those will theoretically be the most delicious. I'm going to have to be in perfect health to be able to eat a sandwich as big as my head! I'll keep you posted on how tonight pans out :)

Parque San Francisco

Our Mexican friend at the movies