Santo Domingo (Mexico City) continued...

We spent two more days in Santo Domingo with our host families and left for the center on the fourth day of our trip to Mexico City. The second and third day in Santo Domingo flew by so quickly. Our group was always visiting Non governmental organizations, attending cultural shops, or just spending time with our families. I will include some of the highlights of our time in Santo Domingo…

One of the mornings we traveled around the city in small groups. My group went to UNAM, the biggest university in Mexico. It was absolutely huge (and it kind of reminded me of OSU). We went there with one of the mothers from the community and walked around the big greens in the middle of the campus. When we stopped for a break, we met a group of students preparing for a show (they were dancing and practicing on stilts).

On the way back to the community, the mom started talking about which parts of chicken are our favorites to eat. To my surprise she said her favorite part was the patas de pollo (chicken feet). I told her that I thought it sounded interesting and I would have to try it some day… But, I guess it was my lucky day because a lady was selling patas de pollo on the very same street on which we were walking. So, I tried the chicken feet covered in hot sauce and I’ve decided that I was glad to have tried them and I never want to eat them again. There is barely any meat and you have to chew on the foot almost like it is gum… but for some reason I think I like gum a little better…

Later that afternoon we went to a park that had preserved the original landscape of the community. It was incredible to see how uneven the volcanic rock was. There were beautiful flowers growing out of the sharp rocks. People had carved their names in the cacti sprouting from the rocks. Also there were a few animals carved out of the rocks (on snake that was about 30 feet long). It was amazing to imagine how difficult it would have been to build a city ontop of the volcanic rock (especially without many resources). While we were taking pictures, a police officer approached Mojdeh and said we weren’t allowed to be taking pictures without permission. Good thing Mojdeh is very used to these run-ins with the police. She was able to manage the problem and we didn’t have to pay a fine…

We began the next morning with a film about the events of the 2nd of October 1968. It was a situation kind of similar to Kent State (but much more intense). Lots of students were fed up with the oppressive government and were protesting against the government in a square called Tres Culturas. After the mitin (meeting) ended, the government had snipers and helicopters positioned around the square. These forces opened fire on the students who were protesting in the square. For that night and the following days many people (including the people in the surrounding buildings who housed injured students) were “disappeared” or killed by the governmental forces. The militant forces even went to hospitals and abducted people with bullet wounds. The media sources reported 20 deaths, but the number was much closer to 200 and there are still unaccounted people.

After the movie, we went to the Coyoacan Market to spend a little time browsing through the shops and museums nearby. We went to Frida Khalo’s house (famous Mexican artist with a very interesting style). Her house has been transformed into a museum with some pictures and photos of her. All the furniture is set up to show how she lived (she was a very strange woman so seeing her house gave us some perspective to her life). Later in the afternoon, Joshua, Lauren, and I played with our host sister Elsa and talked to our host mother. We then went to a silk screening shop to make a design and silk screen it onto a shirt of bag or whatever we wanted. It was very interesting to see Flavio’s (the guy who taught us) process of silkscreening shirts with very little resources. Later that night, we went to salsa classes and learned a little bit about how to dance. It was pretty difficult to learn because the guys all taught different ways to dance so there was no one way to learn (I probably needed to relax and just dance instead of worrying about the steps)

That night, Joshua helped our host mom make some talmales for the breakfast the following day. All the host mothers and families met the next day to eat tamales and enjoy one last meal with all the students. Earlier in the morning, Lauren and I observed a government run lecheria where the government gives a certain amount of milk to children. Each boy (until 13 years) and girl (until 15 years) gets a certain amount of milk from the government. It was really interesting to see the system of receiving milk. There were lots of rules and the moms had to arrive at a certain time every week or they would lose their privileges to the free milk. (Unfortunately we had to get up super early 6:00 to see the lecheria… but it was very interesting).

After the breakfast with the moms we said our goodbyes and thank yous and headed off to the center of Mexico City for the rest of our adventures… (to be continued)