This first week has gone by quickly in some ways, slowly in other ways. We've done a fair amount of exploring various neighborhoods, trying a couple of restaurants, and just familiarizing ourselves with everything (and practicing our Spanish, of course!). Today we moved to a super-cheap hotel, to give our hosts some space again and, admittedly, to give ourselves some space of our own where we don't feel dependent on anyone. We'll stay here until we find an apartment, which will hopefully be sometime this week. We looked at a couple of apartments this weekend, with a realtor who was recommended to us. They were both quite nice, but were bigger than we need and at the top of our price range. So, the realtor is going to contact us tomorrow with some more options. We've also done some looking on our own - on Craigslist (who knew they had that here?) and another website called metroscubicos. Hopefully we'll also be able to take a look at a couple of those places this week.
All in all, it seems like the vacation is over. Now it's time for us to work seriously towards building a foundation here. Luke is planning to look for somewhere he can take some Spanish classes, and I've got a meeting with a pianist/piano teacher who will hopefully be able to direct me to possible employers. I've passed a couple of small music schools in our exploring over the last couple of days, so I may also stop by those places to see if I can make some connections.
Our Sunday adventure: a visit to the Bosque de Chapultepec (Chapultepec Forest, actually just a big park). We walked (much longer than it looked on the map) to the Metro, found the right train, and got off at the Bosque. Our guide book told us that Sunday is a busy day there - lots of families go to spend the day, picnic, and enjoy themselves. There are LOTS of vendors set up inside and outside the park, clowns, people dressed up as Barney or Winnie the Pooh or Elmo. Kind of ridiculous in some ways, but it's clearly a popular place for Mexicans. Kids can get their faces painted and you can buy all sorts of candy and toys. We wandered around the park a little and ended up at the Zoo, which is part of the park. Admission was free, so we went in to check it out. I was interested to see what it would be like - my only other zoo experience outside of the U.S. was in Havana, Cuba, where the zoo (and the animals within it) was in pretty bad shape. The zoo we saw today was definitely in better shape than that one, although I'm fairly sure that if we were in the U.S., animal rights activists would be pretty unsatisfied with the conditions of the enclosures. (Although, do animal rights activists even like zoos at all? I don't know.) Anyway, after the zoo, we made our way back out through throngs of people and vendors, and set out to find something to eat. The neighborhood directly north of the Bosque is called Polanco - one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Mexico City. Once we were inside Polanco, we definitely felt that we were in a different place. The streets are nicer and cleaner, there are fewer street-side establishments and more nice restaurants and stores. As we were looking for a place to eat, we got caught in a downpour and took shelter outside the entrance to the Hard Rock Cafe. So there you are. Definitely not the Mexico City we had seen over the past week. We found a relatively affordable restaurant which offered supposedly "authentic" Mexican food, so I ordered a quesadilla... I wanted to see how they make them here. Turns out, they're exactly the same as they are in the U.S. Lesson learned.
And now, here we are, back at the hotel. Hopefully there will be lots to report (good things, of course) in the coming week...
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