Hola Todos!

Hello from Morelia, Mexico,

Today marks the beginning of the second week of my stay here in Mexico, and I have been thoroughly enjoying myself so far. I am remembering more and more of my buried spanish, but I still have moments when I accidentally slip into german. It makes people look at me like I'm crazy, not that most of you don't already think that about me anyway.

On Thursday we went on a walking tour of downtown Morelia. We refers to the entire group that is in the exchange program at UNLA (Universidad Latina de America) right now. There are people from Oregon, Washington and Michigan, with maybe one person from California. The group is made up of three programs. A three week program for educators, and two six week programs: The language and culture program I am participating in, and a nutrition program that includes some fieldwork finding out about the diets of one of the communities outside Morelia. (There are about 1.2 million people living in and around Morelia.)

So, back to the walking tour. We got to see the Cathedral in the center of Morelia where they light off fireworks every Saturday night (I haven't gotten to see it yet, but I still have time). We also saw a hotel in downtown Morelia that has the ceiling of what was a courtyard in the original building when it was a house, covered in tiffany stained glass. The courtyard was sealed over decades ago (or more) but the stained glass is within twenty years or so and they are very proud of it.

The group also got to see the city library, which was built a couple CENTURIES ago, and is still in use. They have some VERY old books in there, and most of them can still be read today (though seeing some of them would require paperwork that would take longer than most people have left to live.) From there we got to go see a couple old convents and monasteries. Some have been turned into schools or government offices, at least one is a museum, and another is a music conservatory. It is interesting to see all the different architectural styles and the way they continue to use the old buildings.

One building has murals all around the upper floor around a courtyard, telling the history of mexico, Michuacan (the state Morelia is in) and Morelia itself. These were commissioned by one of the first Mexican presidents as a way to try to educate the populace that could not read or write.

Yesterday (Saturday), the group of us got to go on one of the two excursions that the school has planned for us (most of us thought that there would be more, so there is talk about going to Mexico City and/or the Beach on some of the weekends when there is nothing else planned.)

Yesterday's excursion left from UNLA at 8am, and we didn't get back until 8:15pm. (It was a very long day.) We went to Tinsunsan (and no, I am not sure of the spelling) where we got to see ruins of Indian step pyramids and temples. I have pictures, which I will send to anyone who wants them, once I figure out how to get them off the camera and onto the computer. (So far, they either will not notice that the camera is hooked to the computer, or say that I need an installation disk. I will keep trying.) We then went and saw churches which include extremely bloody crucifixes and some beautiful paintings. They are doing quite a lot of restoration work to the outsides of the churches, which includes restoring the original 16th century paintings that were on the outside and have since been covered by more recent paint. We then had time to look around the markets. Lots of work with straw, some cloth and a lot of REALLY cool ceramics. I would have bought an insane amount (very cheap, ie. cool mugs for $0.50 American) if I had any hope of getting it home safely. They also had cool tablecloths that reminded me of the one my mom bought from Mama Row (however that store is spelled).

From Tinsunsan we drove to Patzucarro where we saw another cathedral, some very funny folk dancing, and a museum showcasing the different handcrafts made in the region. We then waked through a market which included a lot of (somewhat) fresh seafood, the smell was appalling, and tons of other stuff. In Patzucarro I bought myself a cool, red, long-sleeved shirt with some embroidery.

From there we went to Santa Maria de Cobri (Saint Mary of the Copper). As you can guess from the name, there was a lot of copper. By this time though, everyone was exhausted so we didn't stay very long. We did get to watch them work on some big copper pots though, which was cool. They would heat the copper up in a pit fireplace, kept hot with bellows. Then, when the copper was red hot, one man would take it out of the pit with tongs, and hold it on an anvil while four other men got around to hit it wit sledgehammers. They got into a rhythm so that the hammers hit one right after the other so that they could get the most shaping in before the copper cooled enough that it needed to go back into the fire. It was amazing to watch. They said that even medium sized pans take about 20 hours to make.

I hope everything is going well in Oregon, or wherever you are reading this from. I am having a lot of fun here. (I appologize for not putting this under a lj-cut, but I am not sure how, and don't really have time to look it up.)