Día 6

Today was a long day. Today was a crazy day, too. Today, we went to El Zocalo, the Times Square of México City. From there, we visited la Oficina Nacíonal de Correo, the National Post Office. That was pretty cool. They had vintage stamps from every world cup since 1910, they had imported structures from foundries in Italy, and they had floor upon floor of gilded rooms full of mail. And freight bicycles that they rode into the post office to collect the mail and then go back out again. That was pretty cool.

Afterwards we went to El Palacio de Bellas Artes, or the palace of fine arts. There were fine arts. We saw one of the most famous paintings in the history of México, the Man at the Crossroads by Diego Rivera. It's an amazing painting. It's meant to be a dichotomy between capitalism and communism in the 20th century, right before the beginning of World War II.

After leaving the Museum, we walked a little more along the streets, had coffee, and came up on the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown. It was huge. It was amazing. Directly in front of it was the Plaza de la Constitución, the Tian An Men of México. (without the violent history.) Downtown here is where they have they expensive franchised shops, such as Starbucks, Holiday Inn, Nike, and Adidas. Also, in the square there were a lot of open-air markets- I bought a chess set there, and also participated in an Aztec cleansing ritual. That was pretty cool. Ironically some strange stuff happened to me later.

Later, after we'd gone home, we went to play more soccer at the same place. On the way there, the car overheated and wouldn't start, and we locked it at a Tienda nearby to where we were going and took Bicitaxis the rest of the way. I met Rubén's aunt who told me a little about Cancún. I have a friend who just came from there, but it's interesting to see how expensive Cancún is, in fact. We ended up not being able to play today, which was bad luck number two. We returned to the car and started it again, now that it had cooled down, and even brought an extra battery, but the car wouldn't go. After a while, we got the car to start, but it would drive for about 200 feet and then break down again. After this happened twice, we pushed it to a nearby house that belonged to Rubén's grandfather (he owns properties and cars all over the city). Since there were 5 of us, Rubén, Adrian, Axel, and their friend Lalo who also works at Ranchería, pushing the car around wasn't a big deal, unlike when I try and push my car. I hate that. But anyway... We took the car there, which was a noisy and tiring business. And then we met Rubén's great-grandmother, who lived there, and had been alive during the regime of Emiliano Zapata, and will be 100 this year. That's amazing. I had a lot of questions, but I don't speak Spanish. Anyway, we left and took buses back to Ecatepec and then to the house. So, my luck wasn't that great today. But we'll see.