Mexico City and Shrek Madness

Honestly these past two weeks have felt like a hurricane... But like a nice, warm, Mexican hurricane that you really don't mind too much. My USC bud Alex and I left for Mexico City last Wednesday at 3:30 in the morning, and since then I've been going 100, 24/7.

Alex and I also met with the university president, really great guy! He's on the right.

That first Wednesday we got to the city pretty early in the morning, so we managed to check a lot of the stuff off our list we had planned for the week. This included the National Anthropology Museum, which is just enormous, and probably requires at least one whole day to take it all in. But we ran through and got to see some ancient artifacts from all of the biggest pre-Hispanic Mexican civilizations, including the Olmecs, Mayas, and Aztecs.

My role model.

Afterwards we hiked up to Chapultepec Castle, which has great views of the city. Honestly I can't describe how big Mexico City is... like 25 million people or something. MASSIVE. But the areas we saw were very clean, and felt safe! And the metro system works extremely well. I was pleasantly surprised!

This is Chapultepec! It's in the middle of a gorgeous public park.

We took an Uber to the Frida Kahlo Museum, which is situated in her old house in the neighborhood of Coyoacan. It's a lovely neighborhood, and it was so cool wandering through the house where this almost legendary figure created her greatest works.

Fun fact: Frida's house is REAL blue, and she has a sick garden.

Last up we wandered around the main plaza in Mexico City, Zócalo. For you James Bond fans, this was where the epic helicopter scene from Spectre was filmed!

The next day we woke up real early and caught a bus to Puebla. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous, and Puebla itself is a cute, colorful colonial city with awesome cathedrals and museums.

Just a real nice place to walk around!

Friday morning we woke up early again to explore the ENORMOUS pyramids at Teotihuacan. It was absolutely exhausting, but really magical wandering through this ancient city... It was pretty touristy, and people kept trying to sell us these jaguar roar-makers. I came thiiiiis close to buying one...

It's all very large...

Saturday we hit up Tlatelolco, the site of an awful student massacre in 1968. Quick history: Mexico was about to host the Olympic Games, but student manifestations (similar to those in the United States and elsewhere across the world) were causing problems. So the government solved this problem by exercising extreme repression, and resorting to mass-murder. It was a haunting and powerful moment, standing in the middle of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas where the killings actually took place.

Here you can see some ruins and an old cathedral beside the plaza. This is why it's called Plaza de las Tres Culturas: pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern.

This is the monument to the ones who were killed October 2, 1968.

Afterwards we headed out to a big sports facility where the Vive Latino musical festival was being held. There must have been like 100,000 people there... It was massive. We saw a ton of great concerts, and only got rained on a bit! Even though my phone was pickpocketed at the Two Door Cinema Club show, it was totally worth it.

We're just so hipster and cool...

This is the main stage.

The next morning we explored the National Palace, where we got to see the breathtaking murals of Diego Rivera. The main one is about the size of a basketball court, and is so full of symbolic storytelling that it's honestly just overwhelming.

You can't tell from this pic just how huge this thing is...

That afternoon we went to the second half of Vive Latino, where we saw some more cool Latino indie bands, along with a hardcore rap group (couldn't understand the lyrics at all!). It was a great experience to close out the Mexico City trip.

Back in Guadalajara, I started the trudge of rehearsals until our first presentation of Shrek The Musical (I'm playing alto sax). Wednesday we practiced for 12 hours straight! 3 pm to 3 am... But it was all totally worth it, because the first performance last night went really well! I'm amazed by how professional the whole thing is. It's like they rented a Broadway musical and just sat it down here in the middle of Guadalajara.

Here's a pic of the dragon prop during rehearsal.

View of Princess Fiona from the pit!

We In The Short Rows Now

Yep, we in the short rows now. I have less than a month left of Tecnológico de Monterrey, and I gotta say, it weirds me out. Now that I've gotten over this last round of partials, I've got some more free time to enjoy this city and this country. But I gotta hurry up because there isn't much time left! That's enough crisis-mode ranting though... I'll fill you in on what I've been up to lately, and what the next few weeks hold.

For one, I'm mildly famous on campus now. I mean, just look at me up on that big screen:

I'm the anti-social one on the bottom right, smiling strangely into his phone.

We've also started full rehearsals for Shrek the Musical (I'm playing saxophone, and the whole musical's been translated into Spanish... have I mentioned this?), which is just way too fun. Honestly I can't speak highly enough of the musicians: they're remarkable. A couple of our main singers got second place or something like that on The Voice Mexico. Suffice it to say that by April 28th, our first performance, it's gonna be lit.

Here's a glimpse of lil Lord Farquaad during rehearsal.

This past weekend, as somewhat of a reward for the hard work put into partials, Tec's international students welcome group Triple W threw a party on a three-story boat in Lake Chapala. It was pretty much as absurd as it sounds. But only one person fell in! So in the end it was tame enough. The sunset over the lake was beautiful... but instead of a picture of that here's a pic of a couple impressive mustaches:

And the one in the middle isn't even Mexican. 

This coming weekend I'll be visiting Tequila, attending a Caloncho concert (my favorite Mexican musician), and rooting on the Chivas for the first time in El Clásico Tapatío (rivalry match between the city's two soccer teams). Then next week I'll be heading to Mexico City and Puebla for the first time! More on all that to come.

Quick closing comments: today in culture class we had super low attendance, so we just ended up talking pretty casually with the professor the entire three hours. At one point the conversation turned to World War II. We had a German, some Japanese folks, and an American (me) in class, so we ended up having a really great discussion, in Spanish (still super cool to me that I communicate with Japanese people in Spanish!), about the effects of the war on our countries. Then the conversation moved to American influences in Mexico and elsewhere around the world. This gave the Spanish and Finnish girls a chance to really chime in, and I gotta say, it was one of the most interesting class discussions I've ever had.