Friday, May 28

We finally arrived at 4am where we are warmly greeted by our Mexican host, Sonia Gonzalez, the Pastor at Santisima Trinidad in Tulyehualco, near Mexico City. Sonia is the Pastor at the church where Miranda and I will serve later in the trip. We´re checked into the hotel by 5am where we are again warmly greeted by a fresh shower and nice bed. We catch up on a few hours of sleep before we head out as a group to el museo de anthropologie.

Again, we are warmly greeted by another "host family." This time I recognize one of the faces. It´s the wife of one of our classmates from Duke, Edgar. He is originally from Mexico so his family met us at the museum to have lunch and take the tour. But upon our arrival, they gave us goodies bags, full of "authentic" Mexican candy. What a nice surprise!

Another nice surprise was meeting Jorge - the esposa (husband) of Sonia. Sonia and Jorge have both been extremely hospitable toward us throughout our stay. One very important thing to note is that neither of them speak English. So, from the get-go, we´ve had to start practicing our Spanish. Mine is a little rusty after having a month off, but I am so thankful I took Spanish this past semester. A slight relief, but I still have a long way to go. 3 weeks of language school should help.

After lunch and some good practice in conversational Spanish, we headed to the museum for the tour. There we learned about the ancient cultures and practices of the Mexican people (gente), beginning about 3000 BC (before the Aztecs) with the civilization in Teotihuacan, a cite just outside Mexico City noted for its pyramids of the sun (sol) and moon (luna). We traveled through time hearing about the ancient Aztecs and their history - seeing replicas of their gods and dieties to pottery and weopons used in their civilizations. For you history experts, I´m certain you know much more about this than me, so I´ll spare many of the details. However, I found it very interesting to see how things have evolved over time in a land where I´ll be living for a period of time.

Another point of interest was the large Aztec calendar or Sun Stone, as the guide called it. I would say that pretty much everyone would recognize this if they saw it (and I´ll try to post a picture), but what I didn´t know is the level of detail exhibited in the calendar regarding certain animals - the jaguar and eagle- and dieties of significance.

Also we saw the feather headress of Montezuma. The story of the headress was that Montezuma tried to pass it on to Cortez upon his arrival from Spain. The Aztecs believed Cortez was a god returning to save them, when in reality, Cortez was the Spanish conquistador who came to defeat the Aztecs and claim the land for Spain.

We also learned about the Mayan culture over on the Yucatan Peninsula, again seeing other replicas of architecture, pottery, and pyramids.

Finally, one of the exciting times of the day was going to a nearby taqueria (taco stand) with Sonia and Jorge. Ordering food can sometimes be a bit challenging because much of the vocabulary differs depending upon where you learn the language. But all the same, using hand signals and the broken Spanish you know will go a long way. It was a wonderful and to a great day!