I am supposed to be working....

But I'd rather relive my vacation. Plus, it's almost been a week since I've been back and I never posted about my second week in Mexico! I did rally and manage to put most of my cold behind me. My nose still ran, and even now I've got a bit of a cough and my voice has gone all funny. I also passed it along to Shelly, which is not at all nice as a hostess gift. (Sorry!) So, what I did... the short version! (HA! I think I'm incapable of keeping it short in anything but height.) Saturday, did not go to market... as the market only happens on Sunday. Instead read "Luck in Darkness." Sunday (Super Bowl Sunday), went to the Jardin Del Arte (Garden of Art) market. It's like a Mexican Artist Alley! Every Sunday they take over a park in the La Contessa (I think that's how it's spelled) section of the city and all the artist set up their paintings. It's supposedly only open until 2, but when we left at 2 it was still going strong. I bought two tiny peices of art, a pair of giraffes for my mother and an elephant for my sister. They were darling little dimensonal water colors. I also bought a Lucha Libre mask for my nephew and two mini ones for my dolls. After the park, we went back to Shelly's apartment building. Almost everyone in the apartment building works at the embassy, so they all decided to have a cookout and super bowl party. Allan made burbon and brown sugar marinated steaks (YUM), and Shelly and I made garlic and parmisian mashed potatoes. The cookout was fun and Shelly and I made it halfway through the superbowl before we decided to ditch and go watch some of the Miyazaki movies from the boxset I bought her for Christmas. (We watched My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away before catching the last five minutes of the game.) Monday was a Mexican Holiday (Constitution Day) so Shelly had the day off. We decided to take a tour offered by a local hotel to Cuernavaca and Taxaco. We saw a pretty and old church in Cuernavaca, and then went to Taxaco. Taxaco is where they mine silver and all the silver shops are. We stopped at a place where they explained how to identify silver types (plated, mixed with copper, mixed with zinc) and gave us speech about how their silver was so much better then everyone else's we'd find in town. They also tried liquoring us up with a lime, honey and tequila drink. They gave us a little to sample, and I decided to try it when they said it had only "seven drops of Tequila in it." Of course, as I was drinking it they qualified that with "Seven Mexican drops." My throat closes up when I drink alcohol in any quantity, though I'm okay if I took my medicine in the morning. Lucky I had, instead I just lost my voice for about a half hour due to those "Mexican drops." I spent way too much money on silver. I got gifts for my Mother, my sister, my grandmother, Shelly... and a few things for myself. The tour guide took us to an awful Best Western for lunch, where I had the worst enchiladas ever, and Shelly had a horrible thing they called a steak. (We had our doubts.) Because of the holdiay, the tour van got stuck in traffic on the way home. Our driver and guide decided to leave the highway to get on the freeway in the hopes of less traffic...we got lost, and when we found the freeway, found the traffic. It took us nearly 5 hours to get home. Despite the lunch and traffic we had a great time. Tuesday, Wedensday and Thursday I spent on the Turibus around Mexico city. The Turibus is a double-decker bus that drives around the city to the various landmarks, museums and points of interest. For a day it's $10 (100 pesos), for three days it was only $19. It's like getting a day free! The first day I just rode it around listening to the audio tour. The second day I got off at La Reforma and walked over to the embassy for lunch with Shelly. After some very good tacos I took the bus to the Anthropology museum. It's huge! I spent hours and only managed to get through most of the first floor. The third day I made friends with a fellow turibus rider, Maria from Spain, and we got off and walked around the La Contessa neighborhood, and then rode the south route that shows the other side of the city. We got off at only one stop, the Frida Kahlo museum. It was very neat, it is the house where she and Diego Rivera lived and had little of her finished artwork. But there was a lot of her sketches, correspondence, her workspace and belongings. Very cool. Thursday night Shelly's Mother and her boyfriend came into town. Alan made dinner again (very good). Shelly had heard that her belongings were finally going to arrive on Saturday, so Friday the Embassy was going to haul out all of their borrowed stuff. To get us out of the way (well, me mostly), Alan and I went to the Pyramids. I climbed the moon pyramid! I was too chicken to climb the sun pyramid, which is taller and allows you to go all the way to the top. We also went to place that makes onyx scuptures and they showed us both how they make the sculptures and how to make tequila. I did not drink the tequila. Saturday I went with Shelly's parents to Xochimilco, where there is a series of canals and bright colorful boats, poled by a single man, that can carry up to thirty people. We had lunch and went on a boat ride. There were floating mariachi bands! That night, Shelly, Allan, Jean (Shelly's Mom), OB, and I went out again to the Argentian Steak house where we had another excellent dinner. Alan had flaming coffee, and for desert Shelly and I had flaming apple crepe. Any night that ends in flaming dessert is a good one. Sunday, I had to go home. =( I went from 75 F tempuratures to below 6. That's just not right. Most of this week I've just been recovering. SO tired!