Ciudad de México, First Full Day, Language School, Meanderings

| Photo by Gary Enns |

In the morning, relaxed on the noisy balcony with some strong espresso from the French press and watched the morning traffic of the avenida press by.

After breakfast, a short walk, past the catfecitos with the gray and whites and calicos wandering over the counters and tables, to the escuela just a block away. In a class with six other B1 students and a teacher named Jonas who speaks rather fast and may assume we know more than we do. At times, I feel like I’m standing in a cascada de palabras y frases. I should probably start watching telenovelas.

In my class, tenses, tenses, and more tenses—the advanced kind, for me, anyway, the kind for the past that shoots into the future, the kind about hypotheticals, and the kind with no clear equivalent in English.

After school, walked back through the streets to revisit Por Siempre, this time the street-stand location. Sat on a tile bench in front of a combination hair salon/pet supply store and ate tacos with lime and roasted onions on enameled tin plates. 

West on Avenida Michoacanan, into the heart of La Condesa, to the white-and-blue tiled Churrería El Moro for curled churros and paper cups full of thick hot chocolate, then the Parque México, past the Foro Lindbergh with its skaters ollying over curbs, its street graffiti, and the fountain statue of the confident nude mujer tipping two large jugs into the pool beneath her feet. Strolled through jacaranda-lined paths, trellis-covered avenues, cabanas in the form of tree trunks, and local Condesans resting in the shade.

Stopped for groceries at the Walmart Express, strangely out of place, squeezing past other shoppers in surprisingly narrow aisles. 

Then the most wonderful street—Avenida Amsterdam, a grand boulevard with Art Nouveau mansions and a green tree-lined park center complete with pedestrian path, wrought iron-framed shrubs, and circular fountains like the Plaza Citlaltépetl in the middle of its roundabout. Traffic is near non-existent on this boulevard, at least on a weekday afternoon, and there are little quaint cafes and restaurants with well-kept facades on every block.

Finally, back to the apartment, backpacks full of groceries, to catch up on some grading and Spanish homework. Spaghetti and broccoli dinner.

Calling it night.