Hello all,
I made it to la Ciudad de Mexico yesterday afternoon. My dad is here with me, if you didn't know. We are spending a few days in the city just so I can get acquainted and just explore this huge city. Mexico city is home of just around 22 million people. That is huge, especially coming from places like Flag and Prescott. Yesterday was filled with flying, leaving the Prescott airport at 7:30 am, a 2 hour layover in LA, and arriving to Mexico City around 4 pm Mexico time, 2 AZ time. Our hotel is right around the corner from a Cathedral, which we can see from our hotel room window. Also, there is a very large government building that forms a square around this huge Mexican flag. It is absolutely beautiful and thankfully they are just starting to take down their tacky Christmas decorations, which I am happy that we got to see.
Today, Wednesday, my dad and I went to El Bosque de Chapultepec, which is really fun to say. It is a huge park in the middle of the city, much like Central Park in NY, but it is full of museums. We went to El Museo Nacional de Antropolgia, the Anthropology Museum. It was surprisingly very interesting. It was really cool to see so many Aztec and Mayan artifacts that have been preserved. My favorites were definitely the statues of the gods that had snakes for necklaces and human hearts for hands. Man their culture is so different than ours.
My dad keeps trying to talk to people in Spanish, tries is the key word, which normally turns out with them saying "What" or speaking back in English. I guess that we look like gringos (white Americans) enough that we are an easy target to get pickpocketed. Which actually happened to my dad when we were on the subway today. It was pretty scary. There were all these guys around us that made me suspicious because they keep pushing and trying to get closer to us. I held on to my purse even tighter and turned away from them when I felt one of there hands attempting to reach for my purse. Before I knew it my dad was yelling "Hey" and "Stop" chasing a man off the subway to a stop that wasn't ours. I suddenly realized what was going on and shuved my way, and I really mean shuved, off the subway finding out that the man droped the wallet right in front of a police officer who grabbed him. It was crazy, but thankfully ended well. The only thing that my dad lost was his glass case which was in his other pocket. So that means this guy got both his glass case and wallet sometime in the 2 minutes that we were on the subway. I knew this stuff happened but I didn't really think that it would happen to us.
Let me tell you this place is definitely a little weird, not bad just a definitely different. Here are a few reasons why:
- You can't hail a taxi on the street cause there are a lot of people who fake to be taxi drivers. Scary
- Tonight at dinner, all the women were given roses.
- The subway costs 2 pesos, about 16 cents.
- Everyone crosses the road like frogger would, one lane at a time in the middle of moving traffic
- In some restraunts they offer English menus, good, but they have some random words that are spelled funny, ex. yogurth for yogurt
- There are police men on pretty much every corner, mostly doing traffic control
- Everyone is really friendly, besides those pickpocketers!

Overall, we are having a good time, besides the few bummps in the road. Tomorrow we are going to Cuernavaca, which I am so excited for!
I miss you all and hope you are having a fantastic week!