pixmania

happy 2nd day of 2009 everyone

i am now in mexico city with sarah bullock. she arrived on new year´s eve at the airport. i had been there for a few hours having flown from chetumal on the belize border. when getting on the plane at chetumal they had hoovered my rucksack with a little hoover, then got the dust out and put it through a machine to test it for drugs. was all a bit weird, i have never seen that before. thankfully it was all ok. i discovered in mexico that there is only one exchange place in the whole of mexico that will exchange belize dollars, as nobody wants belize dollars here. fortunately that one place is in the airport. unfortunately they were closed. i will try again when we go to meet rod at the aiport next week.

we went out for italian dinner on new year´s eve, because most other places were closed, as were all the bars and most of the clubs and all the shops. nye is a family thing, so people don´t bother going to work even if maybe they could make loads of pesos as it is new year´s eve. anyway we found an italian place and had pasta and wine and not tortillas and tequila. we wore party hats and purple necklaces that they gave us. a man on another table said we reminded him of patsy and that other one from ab fab, i suppose because we were laughing loudly and drinking wine. then we watched some fireworks on avenida reforma, and blew our party horns in some policemen´s ears and ate 12 grapes. these 12 grapes are some mexican tradition but i don´t know what. i think you are meant to eat one on each strike of the clock of it going midnight on new year´s eve, maybe to keep away evil spirits, that´s usually what things boil down to over here. we then went back to the hostel via looking for a place to have some drinks. we found one club with nobody in it, playing really really loud music, so we didn´t stay there, but we did steal a little party hat from the table. then we got back to the hostel and slept on the doorstep until the people that work there returned at 2am. it was freezing. a man asked us if we wanted to go to his house for a coffee. we thanked him kindly but decided not to as he could have killed us. he looked very nice and friendly but you never know.

in the hostel there were some strange germans (is there any other type??), a swedish boy with long hair who told funny stories, a boy from mozambique and america who spent the whole time plugged into his laptop watching movies or something, a really annoying australian girl with nice clothes but wonky eyes, and an american boy with the most old school digital camera i´ve ever seen. he´d bought it in a thrift shop for like $5. he was a bit napoleon dynamite.

i opened my parcel of things that sarah had brought over from england for me, which was very exciting. i am now the proud owner of a moroccan headscarf from jim and ginny, a new camera complete with some photos of the pickleses at home in england on it (but not the new greenhouse which i really wanted to see), some pencils, some english newspaper articles (with crosswords completed), 3 books, and some avon skin so soft moisturiser, which apparently is the best thing in the whole world for repelling mosquitoes. thanks mum for the things, and thanks sarah for bringing them. rod can you bring some ribena too please?

sarah has the most amazing sense of direction i´ve ever come accross, so i leave her in charge of leading the way. she doesn´t even use a map, it´s totally amazing. makes a change from wandering around in circles. she has noticed quite a few rabid dogs on the pavements, which i have reassured her aren´t rabid, just mexican. we went to the park in bosque de chapultepec yesterday for a walk, and she accidentally threw the map in the bin, so we had to go back and scrabble around for it, which was quite amusing as there were lots of people standing nearby. we found it. there is a giant digital clock in the main square here which is counting down to the revolution centenary and independence day bicentary, both of which are about 621 days 23 hours 15 minutes and 39 seconds away at this moment. that is a long countdown, but obviously these 2 events are very important to mexicans. there is the most huge christmas tree we have ever seen, i don´t think it is real though. there are also lots of massive christmas lights up on the buildings and hanging above the streets.

tonight we might go to a mexican wrestling match, and tomorrow we will go to see some huge mayan ruins called teotihuacan to the north of mexico city.

hope you are all having a lovely 2009 so far. my resolutions are to keep up the non smoking, and to be better at budgetting.

ps i have put 2 photos on the previous blog. i will attempt to put more on my blogs this year, that can be another resolution in fact.

adios x