Chilaquiles

Well after finishing that 4th of July beer last night things quickly went downhill for me. I'll spare you the details but lets just say I spent the time between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. alternating  between my bed and the bathroom, while taking tons of pills and trying to get my fever to go down. And I literally got over my cold a few hours before that!

Sometime around 3:30 a.m. I emailed my boss to tell him I probably wouldn't be at work today. I'm happy to say I did get some sleep and the fever finally broke, but I have spent the last two hours in bed drinking gatorade. Ugh.

ANYWAY...thinking about food makes me feel nauseous right now, but I wanted to write something somewhat interesting. 

I have made it a mission of mine to take a picture of all of the chilaquiles I eat in Mexico. Its pretty much my favorite food. The ones below are from La Poblanita, a restaurant a couple blocks south of my house. It is a brightly decorated Mexican restaurant with extremely reasonable food prices (my breakfast was under 5 dollars).

I also made some for myself for dinner last night. I toasted the tortilla chips myself. Ok, it doesn't look or taste as good as the restaurant ones, but you can't really go wrong with salsa verde, tortilla chips, and cheese.

When I go home I'll have to try recreating a more authentic recipe.

Happy 4th.

Happy 4th of July! I am celebrating with this Mexican beer.

I promise to have some more pictures up soon. I was sick with a cold and flu like symptoms for most of the weekend, so I´ve been too lazy to upload pictures from my camera. I have some exciting things like icecream and more chilaquiles to post.

Breakfast.

Due to strange and long-story circumstances, we have had a blender in this house for approximately one week. I got super excited that it was there and bought a weeks supply of stuff to make my favorite green smoothie (mango avocado spinach). It was awesome starting every day with a smoothie, because I previously was eating peanut butter toast and banana every morning. That gets boring.

I went to Costco last week and snagged a huge bag of frozen blueberries, dreaming about the delicious smoothies I was going to make. Then the blender fell on the floor. And there is a hole in the container.  

Now this tragedy isn't anyones fault, because the whole contraption the blender is sitting on is stupid in the first place. There is a shaky table above the trash cans with this big microwave on top of it, and the blender was sitting on top of that when it fell. Its like that Barney song "The Green Grass Grows All Around." (I don't think you'll regret clicking on that link.)

My bottle of balsamic vinegar already fell victim to this table setup. It was only a matter of time before something else fell.

The great thing about Spanish is you can say "se cayó," which means it fell, but is basically saying oh it made itself fall. Blame the blender for falling.

Well Barney songs aside I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that big bag of blueberries. I'm not sure if the blender will be replaced or fixed (hopefully soon?). I caved and bought some raisin bran (I have been against packaged cereal for so long now it did feel wrong to put it in my shopping basket).  Now I can at least put my blueberries in something.

UPDATE: Since I drafted this post the blender was replaced with a new blender, with a glass container. It is still on top of the shaky table even though we suggested otherwise. We´ll see how long it lasts!

Mexican Presidential Elections

It looks like the polls were correct in predicting Enrique Pena Nieto as the next president of Mexico. The voting took place on Sunday and the results are only preliminary. They will be counted over and over again this week and in the coming months.  The second place finisher, nickcnamed AMLO, didn't take kindly to losing 6 years ago and his supporters closed the main street Reforma for months by camping out on it. He never admitted that he lost and introduced himself as the real president of Mexico. He said he would not do this if he lost this year, but we'll see what happens!

Here are some interesting things I learned about Mexican elections:

• People are randomly selected to work at the polls. Unlike our poll workers, they do not get paid.

• All of the people working at the poll count the votes by hand and need to come up with matching numbers.

• You can get a lot of free things at stores and restaurants if you show your thumb with ink on it (proof that you voted). Coffee, discounts on food, free whopper jr. etc.

• The ballots have pictures of the parties' symbols (for people who can't read).

• The word used for going to the polls means to go to the "urns." According to my french and german roommates, this is normal in other languages too. I'm glad we chose polls instead of urns.

Corruption.

One of the issues that has captivated me the most in Mexico is corruption. Polices officers, security forces, government, etc. Who can Mexican's trust? Who can they call when a crime is committed?

My internship supervisor told me about a survey on corruption in different areas of Mexico. It asked residents how corrupt they thought their state was. It turns out some of the most corrupt states residents believed they were the least corrupt, because they thought the corrupt behavior was totally normal. Of course we have corrupt officials in the U.S., but in general we believe that we should be able to call on the police to help us and that there are certain things government employees should and shouldn't do.

The recent shooting in the Mexico City airport between corrupt security forces definitely brought this closer to home for me. I'm not sure how bad it is in Mexico City and I don't want to push my luck to find out, but it seems that in the northern states and areas particularly high in drug violence people don't bother calling the police if something happens. Changing how all of these organizations function on a daily basis seems insurmountable, but is essential to successful economic and social development.

I am taking a corruption course this coming fall semester and I can't wait to dig into these issues a little more!

Sickness.

Being sick in a foreign country is no fun. There is so much you want to do, but you know if you don't rest you'll never get better. I have lots of experience (I think I almost met my death bed the first weekend I was studying abroad in Poland). Luckily I get to explore the usually have super potent medicine that you don't need a prescription to get!

My boss has been warning me for two or three weeks that I should be taking vitamins. He said that the viruses (especially the cold and flu) in Mexico City hit him really hard and seem to be a lot stronger, since it never gets cold enough or hot enough to kill them. I finally listened and bought some Vitamin C on Wednesday night... then Thursday morning I woke up with a sore throat. Bad timing. It just got worse today.

To be fair, I haven't been sleeping as much as I should or eating as many vegetables as I normally do.

What sucks: today is a beautiful day and I am laying in bed. I missed lunch with my co-workers who are only working the election, so they will be gone come next week. Plus, I am missing going shopping with my housemates (there are big sales this weekend).

So alas, when I should be drinking cerveza in the sun with my coworkers or shopping with my housemates, I'm watching t.v. shows, drinking hot herbal tea, and practicing saying "me duele la garganta."

Still hoping to avoid the worst: stuffy nose etc. I hope at least it will wait until Tuesday so I can enjoy the long weekend!

Tunas

I love trying new food, especially when they are fruits or vegetables, so when my coworker suggested we get some cactus at a market, I was all in. I hadn't bought it before because I wasn't sure how to eat it.

They are called tunas here (not to be confused with tuna fish, which is "atun").



Here is Elena peeling the tunas. The next day our co-workers corrected us and showed us that you only need to cut the top and bottom off, make a slit, and then the skin comes right off.

The tunas have a texture like watermelon, but super juicy. There are a lot of seeds like watermelon has too, but we just eat them. I have been having one or two a day and I'm hooked!

mm cactus popsicle.

Streets and Sidewalks

I walk for a total of 1.5 to 2 hours each day (which makes me really hungry). I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of things I see while I´m walking so you can get an idea of what its like to walk around in Mexico City.

First of all, the sidewalks are... interesting. They seem to be random slabs of concrete thrown together, with some blocks totally torn up as if an earthquake just happened (which I guess it sorta did). This picture is actually a pretty good sidewalk. Its fine when I´m walking by myself, but when I´m with someone else and we are talking it is easy to forget to look down! I have tripped more than once, but luckily have not fallen yet. Just try walking in heels!

The second thing is that for the population of this city there are hardly any other people walking. 

Third, cars are often parked on the sidewalk and I have to walk around them.

The palm trees make up for it all.

Speaking of parking... This is not a parking lot. It is actually a diagonal intersection and I´m on the corner. The cars park in a triangle like shape and I have to walk through them to cross the street.

I walk at the same time each day, but some days there is a ton of traffic and other days there isn´t much. It seems pretty unpredictable!

And just for fun... I always smile when I see these trucks with open sides.

Museo Nacional de Antropología

On Saturday I headed to the neighborhood of Roma Norte to meet my co-worker. We got brunch and then walked to the National Anthropology Museum.

The weather was nice (well cloudy, but it wasn´t raining at least), so it was ok when we got a little bit lost. I have realized that even when a route looks direct on the map, do not be fooled, you will get lost.

The Anthropology Museum is huge with tons of stuff to see. I think we were there for around four hours. I took a lot of pictures, so enjoy!

Chilaquiles, my favorite!

The cafe where I had my first chilaquiles in Mexico, needed to document it.

A park in Roma Norte.

Entrance to Chapultepec Park (the museum is near the park).

Middle of the Museum.

After all of that we decided to treat ourselves to a relaxing drink. Being a tourist can be exhausting!

Sunday Pictures

Today I headed to the Centro Historico with one of my roommates. She wanted to go to La Merced to buy a duffle bag. The market was huge, crowded, and it was so easy to get lost. 

We were lucky enough to find our way out after browsing and get directions to the Zocalo. It was about 5 blocks away, which the people we asked for directions thought was really far. People don't walk a lot here!

We went into the cathedral and then had lunch at Cafe de Tacuba. I had enough cheese in my enchiladas to last me a couple of weeks.

Here are a few pictures from the afternoon.

Cathedral on the Zocalo.

Inside the Cathedral. 

Traditional dancers.

Every type of chip and nut you could want. We bought plantain chips!

Some biking event that made me miss my bike so much!