...and scene

I spent my last full day in Mexico City with Ben and Adam in the former mining town of Taxco, about 2.5 hours south of DF by bus. The city is built into the side of a mountain, and walking through steep cobblestone streets surrounded by a breathtaking mountain view is a fine way to end any trip.

I'm back in Salinas now. With a laptop and high-speed internet access I can now upload my pictures, which I will do soon. I'll add them to my previous posts rather than all in one separate entry, and should be done with that by the end of the week.

Dash across the border

Upon entering Mexico, foreigners receive a small and rather useless immigration form. Apparently this form is required to leave the country again. Nobody told me this, nor was this mentioned anywhere on the form. So begins my first story, in which I trekked across the airport to the immigration office and proceeded to bribe my way out of the country, since I lacked the cash to pay the official fee and had no cards with which to extract more money. I definitely would not have been able to do this in the US, but in Mexico all it took was placement of cash on the counter, direct eye contact, some leading questions, and silent understanding. I left the immigration without any remaining cash, but with the documents I needed to check in to my flight.

The rest of the flight went without problem, and in Pittsburgh I met up with Doug, Ronli, and Jenny and we proceeded to drive towards Cincinatti, stopping at a Motel 6 on the way. Sometime around 2:30am someone began pounding on the door next to ours and screaming to her not-so-significant other. This continued for about an hour and a half. Eavesdropping, we learned that this woman was seven months pregnant, whoever was inside refused to accept that he was the father, and that he should open the door "so that she could punch him in the face" [sic]. Finally, Doug called the front desk, a security guard rectified the situation, and all four of us (and presumably them two, too) were able to sleep in peace. The next morning, a heavily tattooed woman in a beater was seen in a pickup truck driven by a skinny, smoking tattooed man with a shaved head. Tires screeching, they rode off into the sunrise, leaving behind a cloud of dust with only their shared future ahead of them. I wish them only the best.

Wedding number one in Cincinatti and wedding number two in Pittsburgh were wonderful. Much alcohol and food was consumed, air guitar duels were fought, and jollity was had by all. I saw many friends I had not seen in over a year, and some I may not see for at least another.

Returning to Mexico, I had a five hour layover at O'Hare during which I hopped onto the El to meet with Neil and Mari for lunch downtown. I got back to O'Hare only 40 minutes before my scheduled departure, but to my dismay I learned that my flight had been delayed 2.5 hours. Miffed, I joined the crowd of Mexicans surrounding the payphones and joined their strife in attempting to call friends and family in Mexico. Few of us had much luck, as my calling card seemed not to work from a US pay phone. I soon became the designated dialer of the group, since I could interpret the English operator instructions. While on the line for one call, a young woman handed me a Minneapolis number and I lent her my cell phone. So I met María, who was returning from visiting her boyfriend in Duluth. It was her first time out of Mexico, and she was rightly confused by the delays and gate changes thrust upon her, not to mention being in an airport in the first place. She understood no English. Excited to practice my Spanish and make a new acquaintance, I became her guide, along with a small group of elderly ladies who were similarly confused by the situation. After more delays and gate changes, we finally left O'Hare 4 hours after our scheduled departure. María and I maneuvered some seat switches to sit together and I continued translating crew announcements and refreshment offerings, and tried and failed to summarize the plot of the inflight movie, "Breach." Later, we helped each other through customs and calling taxis. Yay for new Mexican friends!

El día de cuatro museos

Hospital shifts have begun to lose their charm. Our day usually consists of partnering up with an intern and following said intern through the wards and assisting with physical exams and history taking. However, the hospital rotations shifted recently, and now we have found ourselves knowing more than most of the new interns, who seem never to have been in a hospital setting before. On Wednesday, I waited for a reasonable time and when no intern volunteered to lead me around, I left for Chapultepec Forest, the large park housing many of the museum's finest museums.

Museum of Modern Art
The museum has two floors, one each for pre- and post-war art of Mexican artists exclusively. Pre-war art, or "modern" Mexican art proper is very representational; nearly all pieces had human figures, either as a portrait or in a Surrealist landscape. For me this was interesting insomuch as I previously had little idea of what Mexican art was like besides Diego and Frida. However, they didn't match my own artistic tastes, and I assume they use the term "modern" to refer to the chronological time period of the works rather than the aesthetic movement they seem not to represent. The maze-like first floor housing these works was a tad confusing, especially given the absece of any map.
The post-war second floor, however, was breathtaking. The building's floor plan dictated a similar layout as the first floor, but where walls and fluorescent light dominated the ground floor, here open space and sunlight gave clarity to the building's architecture. Contemporary Mexican art is much more abstract, psychological, and powerful than pre-war art, and some of the most chilling and beautiful pieces of art I have seen were found here.
In addition, the museum boasts an impressive outdoor sculpture garden. All in all, my tepid impression of the pre-war collection was eclipsed by the excellent post-war collection. I would definitely recommend this museum for anyone who likes 20th century art or is curious to discover what Mexican art is like.

Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art
For $2 US, why not? This museum is much smaller than the Modern Art, but its layout is much more logical and its collection sleeker and more thoughtful. With limited exhibition space, Tamayo selects representative pieces to celebrate both the progression of 20th century art and recent works by artists of both Mexico and the rest of the world. The entire museum takes about 45 minutes to appreciate fully.




Museum of Anthropology
This museum takes at least a full day to appreciate; I actually visited this museum the day before but returned to take pictures of the fantastic fountain in the courtyard. The Mexica (also known as the Aztec) exhibit is the most famous and rightly impressive, but we were all even more taken with the Mayan exhibit, which included outdoor temples and underground tombs. The museum is logically laid out according to geography, with ancient cultures on the ground floor and each region's contemporary tribes on the level directly above. The Anthropology Museum is a must see for any visitor to Mexico DF.

Palacio de Bellas Artes
This beautiful and historical exhibition space houses a permanent collection of murals by Rivera and Siqueiros, among others, but the rest of the museum was dedicated to a special exhibit commemorating the 100th birthday of Frida Kahlo, easily one of Mexico's most celebrated artists (along with Diego Rivera). I find Kahlo's art a lot more personal and powerful than Rivera's, but I have never been a huge fan of political art to begin with. Bellas Artes was a bit more crowded than I would have liked, and much less thought was put into the selection of individual works. At times, it felt that the Mexican government had aggregated all these Frida works in one place just because it could. If you ever find yourself in DF, you should certainly walk around the lobby of Bellas Artes, but given the surprisingly small permanent collection, I would make sure you are interested in the special exhibit before paying to enter the upper galleries.

This weekend, I returned to the US for a couple of weddings. There are enough stories here to warrant a separate post, which I will write some other day. Chan, out.

Our Acapulcan amiga

Friday evening was our second in Acapulco. The six of us walked all 100 meters from our motel suite to the beach to watch the sunset. While Adam and I bemoaned our sunburnt backs by sipping cans of Sol and Caley snapped modeling shots of Shaina on the sand, Ben and Sirisha noticed a young woman sitting near us, alone and looking very sad. Being the outgoing, nonthreatening people they are, they walked over and soon we were all chatting about Acapulco, the nightlife and the like, in Spanish due to Barnice's very limited English ability. Awesome. Numbers were exchanged by the end of the night, but we didn't expect much follow-up since of all the med students and interns we've exchanged contact info with, only one has actually ended up hanging out with us later.

Not so with Bernice. She called Ben Saturday evening and we met up with her at midnight at Barbarroja, an outdoor bar/dance club on the main strip. We all drank and danced, chatted and laughed, made silly balloon hats and danced some more. We discovered Barnice to be an drop-dead gorgeous, super friendly girl of exactly our age with an independent personality, a fun silly side, and the ability to dance flamenco (or something that looked like it). The four guys all fell in love with her for a night and Sirisha conversed with her like they had known each other for years. By 5am the bar announced closing time and we all crawled back to our respective beds, ending one of the most random and altogether enjoyable nights of the trip.

Acapulco, indeed.

Thursday morning I leave for another long weekend trip, this time to the Midwest to catch two weddings of some Yale friends. Two weddings, two receptions, cramming into motel rooms, and road tripping with college friends? Sounds pretty sweet to me. Plus, I should have enough time to get downtown and catch lunch with my Chicagoans during my 5 hour O'Hare layover on the way back. Did I mention awesome?