One week in...

Hey everyone! First off, if you click on the "Our Pictures" link on the left it will take you to some up to date albums. Kendra´s pictures are better, but too big to upload to Picasa, but this is good for now.

Tomorrow we are leaving Mexico City and taking a (very) short two hour bus ride to Puebla. Puebla is known for it´s Colonial Architecture, especially the tilework, and it has tons of Churches. It´s Easter Weekend which is a huge deal in Mexico, so we´re hoping to see some fun festivities. We are looking to take a day trip to a nearby town for some more local celebrations, one we have in mind is called Huamantla but we´ll keep you posted on what we do. Puebla is also famous for some sort of giant sandwich called a Cemanita which has been described as a big sandwich with some indigestible fillings, Rich is extremely excited.

Yesterday we visited the ruins at a site called Teotihuacan. We made a mistake in our last post saying they were Aztec, they are not. This site pre-dates the Aztecs by about 1000 years. Not much is known about Teotihuacan except that at its peak had about 80,000 residents and covered about 24 square Kilometers. Pretty impressive for a culture dating to 100BC-650AD. We took the bus 1 hour from Mexico city, and climbed the three large temples, including the Temple of the Sun which was the largest. Temple of the Sun is the 3rd largest by volume in the world. It was a lot of fun and we got some good exercise.

Before we leave Mexico City, here are a few things we learned about the city:

1. Pedestrians use caution! Cars never give the right of way even when there are stop signs or red lights... Suppose we understand given the traffic...

2. Toilet paper doesn´t go in the toilet. Trash can only, otherwise mass chaos in the plumbing systems. We assume this will be true for us most of the next year.

3. Public Display of Affection. Prudes need not apply. People seem to make-out wherever they want... trains, parks, buses... sloppy too.

4. Saying "No Thank You" (even in spanish) to vendors in tourist places must mean "Please, follow me down the street and harass me relentlessly." Good times!

First Impressions aka 3/365ths

We arrived on Thursday around 1:00pm. We took the Metro (subway/El) to the Hostel, which was more complicated but less expensive than a taxi. The Mexico City Metro is incredibly cheap, just about 25 cents a ride with unlimited transfers. The trains also arrive about every 2-3 minutes, so generally it blows the public trans in Chicago completely away. We've also felt very safe and the people are incredibly helpful.

We've spent our first three days in the Historic Center of the city. There is a giant "Zocalo" which is like a colonial town square. A lot of cities in Mexico have a Zocalo, but Mexico City's is huge. It's kind of the equivalent of the loop area in Chicago, near a lot of the primary tourist attractions and very crowded. Tomorrow we are moving to a new hostel in more of a neighborhood rather than such a busy area, so we can get a different perspective of the city.

We took a brief walking tour where we saw the National Palace, a huge bakery, and a photography exhibit. We also have hung out with some hostel friends, and visited a huge indoor market where they sell... pretty much everything. We had Tostadas for lunch there (picture on the right), and basically you could pick between probably 15-20 different types of tostadas. Rich had Ceviche (fish) and Kendra had chicken.

We enjoyed the sunset tonight on the observation deck of the tallest building in the city (and the highest in the world if you include the elevation), and tomorrow we're going to check out Chapultepec Park which is the largest urban park in the world.

How do you pack for a year?

This was one of the most popular questions we heard, so here is a short video on how we packed for this trip, if you're interested.

Keep in mind, everyone is different, so some people pack less and some people pack more than we do.

Also, sorry for turning the camera sideways. I am dumb.

A Going Away Party

First things first: This is our travel blog and this is our first entry. There are more entries to come to be sure.

We plan to use this blog to keep all of our friends and family informed about our whereabouts, our expeditions and our exploits. At the very least, we can keep ourselves entertained!

For those of you who aren't completely sure what we're up to, we plan to fly to Mexico and travel through Central and South America. We have no set plan and no itinerary - our intent is a healthy wandering. We land in Mexico City on Thursday (March 25th, 2010).

We plan to be gone for about a year, which sounds like a lot of time, but if you consider that the life expectancy for the average US Citizen is about 78 years, that's really only 1.3% of our expected lifetime! Chump's change if you ask us...

Why are we doing this? That depends who you ask; some people say we're crazy, some people say we're lucky, but to us, we see the cliched opportunity to have the experience of a lifetime. Both of us have traveled a bit before, but the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a language and culture for an extended period of time is simply too good to pass up.

We worked extremely hard for this opportunity and could not be more excited. Hey, if we hate it, the worst that can happen is we come home and live with our parents...... on second thought, we'll stick it out for a while!

If you're worried about our safety, Rich is a hockey player and Kendra has a masterful wit. We promise to travel as safe and as smart as possible. =)

But on to what we consider the first real part of our trip: On Saturday, March 6th, we held a going away party for ourselves and our friends at Delilah's, our favorite bar in Chicago. The drinks were cheap and plentiful, and our friends turned out in droves to wish us happy travels. We didn't imagine we had so many great friends until we saw you all together.

To see photos from our party and our trip, click the "Our Pictures" link on the left. Feel free to comment on any post by clicking "Comments" below, and become a follower on the bottom right!

Thanks to our friends and family for your support, and yes, your worry. We know we won't see you for some time, but we will see you sooner than you think, maybe at the center of the labyrinth.

Nos vemos!