Saturday #2 - Drew's Birthday

First and foremost, today was Drew’s birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUNNY!!!!!!!!! For his birthday, we had an extremely long day! We started bright and early and got to the school at 8:00am. We then took off with 12 other people + driver to the Basilica in Mexico City. This place had 2 cathedrals, one for 2 different people, as well as other churches on the grounds. We took a TON of pictures, and I will post the link when I get them all up. Seriously, like in the hundreds today! So we went inside the churches and it was pretty cool. I’ve never been in a Catholic church before, let alone while they are doing what I suppose was mass? There were also a TON of baptisms and whatever people do when their kids are ~2-4 years old. I took some pictures of one of the cathedrals that got severely damaged in the Earthquake in the 1980’s? – They are still restoring it – it’s tilted, and actually kind of cool that way.

We then headed further north (I believe) to the Teotihuacan pyramids. They were pretty cool – once again, something I’ve never been to. We walked around and took oodles of pictures here as well. There were two main temples, El Sol, and the other was La Luna (sun and moon). The sun pyramid from what I remember reading was 63 meters high. I don’t know how high the moon one was – but we weren’t allowed to go to the top of it anyway. The steps up were a good foot+ apart so it was like serious climbing. There was one part on the Sun temple that the steps were so narrow, they had put in a handrail so people wouldn’t fall to their morbid deaths. The sun pyramid was also so high and steep that they had a medic van at the bottom – although if someone toppled off the side, there really isn’t a lot they could have done about it! HAH! So yeah, tons of pictures to follow.

After the pyramids, we went out to eat at some restaurant near the pyramids. They had a sign that said Sorry, we’re open. Hahahaha Awesome! It was entertaining – they had people dressed up in authentic (what I’m guessing was) Teotihuacan costumes performing some dances – it was pretty entertaining.

We drove a good 2 hours home and here we are. I have some observations for the day though:

1. lane lines are just a suggestion. If you’d like to drive in 2 lanes at the same time, it’s ok.

2. Street lights are just a suggestion. If you have the urge to go, just do it!

3. Merging is a form of death. These people would drive by watching their rear view mirrors than what was ahead of them. I thought surely we would die at least 50 times. The van didn’t get scratched. Hahaha – all I can say is: AMAZING!

Since it was Drew’s birthday, along with 2 other people that had a birthday this week, they got sung to and I’m going to try and post the video of what they did when they blew out the candles. It’s quite humorous.

I also wanted to mention that on Friday, we went to the zocalo, which is the market in Cuernavaca. Drew bought himself a sombrero and some pretty awesome and cheap marble bookends that are Aztec or Mayan gods of some sort. They’re pretty cool. He’s thinking they were Mayan. We also went to the Mega – which was very similar to Fred Meyer/Target. We grabbed some stuff, and I think I’m going to stock up on some random Mexican candy before we leave. They didn’t have tide pens, and no Aveeno, so I made Drew buy some man soap for the shower since I didn’t calculate how much he’d use and only brought one bottle of body wash. Dangit!

So yeah, that’s about it. It’s time to go to bed though, so I’ll write more tomorrow.