We’re only a couple of blocks from the Monument to the Revolution (see previous post about the Monument) and a couple of days ago Don and I walked over to watch all the school kids, skateboarders and tourists getting wet!

So in the late afternoon when we wanted to take a quick break from studying Spanish, Don suggested we walk over to the Monument where there’s usually a lot of activity going on.

During the World Cup there was a large astro turf soccer field installed at the lower end that was always in use by anyone for pick up games of futbol (soccer).

This is the view of the dome (cupola) as seen from our room at the Casa.

When we were at the top of the dome on the observation deck a couple of weeks ago, we looked and looked to find our Casa but no luck!

We knew it was down there somewhere but we simply couldn’t pick it out from all the other buildings.

But someday when we go back up we’ll know where to look!

Our next day trip was to the beautiful city of Puebla, about 2 hours south of here. We caught a 7 am bus and met our good friend Carlos from the Casa, who was our ‘tour guide’ for the day.

Carlos works in DF during the week for a large multi-national company but lives in Puebla and goes home each weekend.

We’ve told Carlos he should be a docent – he is simply a wealth of knowledge, facts and all things Mexico.  He’s been an invaluable source for catching the right bus, tips on culture, sights to see, etc.

We loved Puebla! Our first stop was to start at the ‘centro historico’ which extends for blocks and blocks, with cobbled stoned streets and many streets only open for pedestrian traffic. A number of pedestrian streets were actually artisan streets where pottery, painting and other crafts were being created.

Scattered around the centro historico were plazas with families and kids (take a look at the little boy in the background chasing the pigeons!) and students with assignments to accomplish!

Walking under the colonnade of one plaza, 2 school girls (high school age) stopped us (Moms were with them) and with Carlos acting as interpreter, they wanted to practice English on us with prepared questions.

We’d been walking for awhile so Don said let’s just walk across the street to the plaza (lots of big trees) and sit on a bench and we’d love to answer their questions.  Lots of laughs and giggles later, they’d asked us some questions (where are you from, etc) and wrote our answers in their school notebooks, while the Moms video’d our ‘interview’ on their phones!

Don likes pipe organs.  Inside the great cathedral Carlos took us to, a service was underway and the organ was playing.  Don whispered if we could stay and listen so we sat off to one side in the huge sanctuary.

The organ was massive, not at the front of the cathedral, but literally in the middle and on the ‘second floor’ of the cathedral.  It’s hard to describe the location – just very big and up high!

But Don was disappointed because the postlude selection was quite ‘tame’ and ‘sedate’ and Don was wanting to hear a full volume, booming, majestic selection worthy of such a magnificent instrument.

By this time we were ready to eat, and we already knew Mexico had a different time culture for what we’d call the noon meal.  They eat that meal around 2-3 pm or so and we did too!  Carlos took us to a wonderful restaurant for our mid-afternoon buffet.

Then on with the tour!  Like I mentioned earlier, Carlos would make a great docent.  He explained a lot of the significance of Puebla in the history of Mexico.  We went to the hill (now a large park) that overlooks the city (and an active volcano steaming in the distance) where one of Mexico’s greatest battles was fought on May 5th, 1862 defeating the invading French, thus Cinco de Mayo is celebrated.

Then on to the south of Puebla to Angelopolis which is the ‘high end’ part of town. Sprawling malls, high end stores and a huge Ferris wheel (much like the London Eye) were a stark change from all the historic buildings and setting of downtown we’d just been in.

But night had come and it was time to head home.  We caught a 10 pm bus back to DF and were back at the Casa by midnight. A great day trip!  Thanks Carlos!

With CELTA now behind us, Don and I are out and about visiting cities that have been recommended for our potential future home.  A couple of weeks ago, we took a Sunday afternoon luxurious bus ride one hour south to the city of Cuernavaca. The bus was deluxe with seats and movies much like the airlines and only cost about $11.00 usd. We left Mexico City and started to climb.  With pine tree forests taking over from our ‘regular’ D.F trees, we entered clouds while the view from our huge window had us looking out over a valley far below.

We knew we were getting up in altitude (Mexico City is over 7,000 feet) because our ears popped as we continued to climb. We later found out that we were up at 9,000 feet! We pulled into a small bus station just a couple of blocks from the zocolo (town square) where families mingled among the vendors and small shops on a warm afternoon.

Most of our afternoon was spent exploring a particular site called the Jardin Borda built in the 1700s. It’s a mansion with gardens, walking paths, a lake with row boats and a huge swimming pool (now empty). The evidence of prior wealth was amazing.

Our next day trip was to Queretaro, about 3 hours north of here. It’s a city completely different from what we experienced in Cuernavaca and here in D.F. There are no street vendors on the sidewalks and the city seemed more prosperous. We saw a lot of new construction going up.

A huge engineering feat astounded us – this ancient aqueduct.  The story and lore behind this great structure would make a great future blog!

There are numerous well known industries located here along with a dozen or more universities in a city of about 1 million people. In 1996, the historic center was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and the World Cup was played here in 1986.

We arranged a taxi for 3 hours and our first stop was at the Mexico headquarters of the Peace Corps.

We had the opportunity to meet with Heather (Director of Programming and Training) who graciously gave of her time to explain the specific mission of the PC here and changes coming down the road that may have a positive impact for our goals – we’ll see!

Genoro (our taxi driver) was an excellent driver who’d lived in California for 4 years so he was also an excellent ‘tour guide’ for us. However, under threatening skies, he warned us taxis quit driving under heavy rain and we might not be able to get a ride later in the early evening back to the bus terminal, so we cut our visit a bit short and he dropped us off at the terminal. We got his cell number and said if we came back we’d like to hire him again!

He was right. It started to rain hard as we got on the bus and the freeway was flooded as we got closer to D.F. but we sailed on through.  A great ‘first look’ at this potential new home.

We’ve lived in Mexico City for over 4 months in the shadow of one of Mexico’s great monuments, walked past it numerous times plus see it two blocks away from our window, but we’ve never toured it.

On Sunday we went from deep in the foundations to the top of the summit! Really enjoyed the experience.

Like many huge structures, you really can’t appreciate how big something is until you stand next to or under it.  This structure is massive!  There’s a glass enclosed elevator that takes you up most of the way, but then you take the stairs to the summit.

We’re starting to learn about the history of Mexico and this was a good history lesson for us.  We learned that the monument actually never started out to be a monument, was once considered for demolition, stood partly completed for quite awhile – but that’s for another blog sometime.

What I really enjoyed was watching the late afternoon thunderstorm moving in as we stood at the summit.  We got home just before it hit!

So now I had temp power back on my laptop (ordered a new adapter on Amazon, had it shipped to our son Marc in Honolulu, who’s shipped it to us with some other stuff).  But I needed to figure out why we weren’t getting wi-fi any more in our room – we’d never had problems before, but heavy rains from the rainy season have kicked in.

In Mexico City, “stuff” for shopping is frequently clustered together, ie, plumbing shops will be clustered along several blocks, women’s shops will be clustered along several blocks, etc.  It’s actually fun to discover that ‘this block’ is student supplies (arts and crafts) and so on.

So I asked Nico (our great Casa house manager) where I should go to look for computer “stuff”.  He showed me on a map and off I went looking for that cluster, taking the great MetroBus system here in DF (Distrito Federal – the capital of Mexico; like Washington, District of Columbia – DC).

I got down in the general area and found lots of music shops, cell phone shops, but nothing that really looked like computer shops – until I was directed to #14 Republica del Salvador.  Jackpot!

But the entrance was, to put it politely, unspectacular – just a relatively narrow door for what I discovered inside.

When I walked in (and walked and walked), I discovered this “tunnel” or corridor of shops actually went from block to block (Salvador to Uruguay) and there were multiple tunnels on at least 3 floors.  The place is huge inside!

My simple goal was to look for a Range Extender – a device to capture the weak signal from the Casa’s router and act as an amplifier for our room.

But this wasn’t going to be so easy…

If you click on the image of the door for a bigger, more detailed look, you’ll see a man standing inside an empty stall (drinking a soda).  That’s generally the size of the stalls and maybe the stalls are about 10 feet deep at the most.  But there are ‘millions’ of these stalls in the complex and it seems each has a barker or two who call out to you (Amigo!) and want to hand you flyers, etc.

I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be like shopping at Best Buy.  I first needed to scope out the place, get my bearings, figure out how the shops were ‘clustered’ (if at all).

I’m pretty good with my mental GPS but it didn’t take long before I was dis-oriented.  All the shops looked alike – but the place was fascinating.  I further discovered that other corridors went out into a third street (Central) which further complicated my orientation.

Ultimately, it took a couple of trips down there but I found a TP-Link brand range extender that I set up this 4th of July weekend and it works great – we’re back in business again!