Mexico City - No Pants in the Subway

I have to say that I really, really miss Noa.  Tomás is very cute, but he gives me big sloppy kisses and barks whenever he hears somebody outside the door, which is all the time.  Tomás lives with Bé's friends in Mexico City, and I get to brush him and give him his food.  And I'm even a bit homesick for Mallorca, which is small and doesn't really feel like a city, not like this one. 




Playing dominoes with Bé's friends

Tomás and me

Mexico City is absolutely enormous!  About 21 million people live here.  If you want to know how many people that is, imagine all the people who live in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.  That's about ten million people.  Just put all those people together in one big city, give each one a twin, and that's how many people live here.  This is one of the largest cities in the entire world.

A long time ago, this valley used to have beautiful lakes and marshes in it.  The original city, called Tenochtitlan,  was built on a group of islands, and you could get about it by crossing little bridges or paddling your canoe along the different canals.  The Aztecs had built floating gardens, hanging gardens, towers and temples, two zoos and an aquarium.  It's hard to imagine it now, because most of the lake and marshes are gone and the city has been built where the lake used to be.  I look at the paved streets and try very hard to imagine the canals and flowers and wild birds, but I just can't do it.  Here's how a painter thought it might have looked, though:

 

 

Mexicans are very proud of their history, and can tell you all about their city.  When I asked what had happened to Tenochtitlan, Belén's friends said, "Come and see".  They took me to the nearest subway station.  The subway, which is a system of underground train tunnels, is called the Metro;and it's enormous just like Mexico City.  The map of the tunnels looks almost like a plate of spaghetti.

 

I've never been on a train before, let alone one that runs underground.  There were convenience stores up on the top level, and Tía Marta (that's what I called Bé's friend) bought me a package of chiclets.  I don't really like gum, but I took it and said, "Gracias" very politely.  I put one in my mouth, and Belén whispered, "Did you know that this is where gum was invented?"  She told me that the ancient Mexicans chewed the dried sap of a tree called chicle, and that they taught the Spaniards how to chew gum.  Can you guess where the word "Chiclet" comes from?

 

We paid our fares, went down a series of escalators, and found ourselves in a great underground room with a train track running right through the middle.  We only had to wait for a couple of minutes before a train came whooshing out of the tunnel and up to the platform.  The doors slid open, people on the inside and outside of the train changed places, the doors slid shut again, and the train shot off into a dark tunnel.

 

 

In a minute, the train came out into another lighted cavern, stopped, and the doors slid open again.  More people sat down in our subway car, and I almost choked on my gum.  The man at the end of the car had forgotten to put on his pants.  There he was in his Spiderman boxers!  He didn't even seem to notice, but everybody else in the car certainly did.  They were staring so hard that I thought their eyes would pop out, except for one older woman who was staring hard in the other direction so that she wouldn't have to look at him. 

 

I couldn't believe that anybody could leave their house without remembering to put on their pants!  But do you know what?  At the next stop two more men got onto the car without any pants.  There were no seats, so they held onto a pole and talked to each other.  They were both wearing suit jackets and ties, and their shoes were nicely polished - BUT THEY HAD NO PANTS!  By now everyone in the subway car was staring and giggling, and nobody was talking to anybody else any more.

 

At the next stop, the man with the Spiderman boxers got off the train.  Another couple of dozen people boarded our car, and I saw that three of them had no pants either!  Now the passengers were beginning to talk again, and I heard the words "sin pantalones" over and over again.  I guess that means, "no pants".  I have seen more people in their underwear than I ever, ever want to see again in my whole entire life.  I wanted to go home and wash my eyeballs with sanitizer.  Bé began to laugh and laugh and laugh.  Between giggles, she explained that every year, around the world, some people go on a "No Pants" subway ride.  You never know when it's going to take place, but it's a big joke like April Fool's.  We just happened to be riding the subway on No Pants Day.  When we went back to the house, people had already posted videos to YouTube.  You can look for them if you want to - but as for me, I don't want to see any more people in their underwear ever again!

 

 

 

Finally we left the train behind, along with all those crazy pantless people.  In the subway station was a map of the centre of old Tenochtitlan, showing all the Aztec palaces and temples.  The big structure at the far end is the Templo Mayor, which was actually seven temples that had been built one after the other.  This subway stop was called Zocalo, and we were underneath the centre of the old city!

 

 

 

We came out of the metro right into the Zocalo, which is a huge plaza that seems to go on forever.  I didn't see any temples, but there were street vendors, little tricycle taxis waiting for fares, and families out sight-seeing.  I was relieved to see that everybody here had their pants on!

 

The Zocalo, with the Cathedral in the background

Taxi!

 



I'd forgotten that I'd asked what had happened to Tenochtitlan, but Tía Marta hadn't.  She told me that this is where modern Mexico City met the past.  When the Spaniards invaded the city, they tore down the temples and palaces and used the stones to pave the Zocalo.  Nowadays, the city is preserving the ruins of the great Templo Mayor around the edges of the Zocalo, and there are always archeologists working there.  Anybody can go look at the ruins.  So we did.  You can look too - here's a video.

The Aztecs don't sound like the nicest people in the world.  They went to war with all their neighbours, and brought thousands of people back to sacrifice in the temple.  Six hundred years ago, when the sixth temple (there were seven built altogether) was inaugurated, the Emperor Ahuizotl ordered twenty days of human sacrifices.  On average, one thousand prisoners of war a day were sacrificed for those three weeks.  This does not sound like a happy cozy place to live, at least not if you lived in a country at war with the Aztecs. 

We went exploring down a side street, and suddenly Tía Marta put her arm around Belén and started to giggle.  Ahead of us was a Christmas tree - a special Christmas tree just for Bé.  Did I tell you that Belén loves ducks?  She collects duck ornaments, duck pictures, and always goes out of her way to say hello to any ducks she meets.  This Christmas tree was obviously made for Bé, and Bé was made for it.

By now, it was time to get ready to go even farther south ... all the way to Colombia where Milton was waiting for me.  I gave Bé and her kind Mexican friends the little Ontario pins that I brought with me, as a kind of thank you for showing me around their countries.  Sometime I want to return to Mexico and see more of it.  That's how I feel about every place I've seen so far, though!

 

Racing the Sun to Mexico

Passport, boarding pass, luggage - check.

Souvenir flamenco dresses in the Madrid airport

You'd be surprised at how many people are in an airport at night.  Most of them are even awake.  There are people cleaning the floors, people cleaning the bathrooms, and people striding along briskly with their luggage rolling behind them.  Of course, plenty of people are also trying to sleep.  Some lie on the floor with their heads pillowed on their luggage; others sleep sitting up or propped against each other.  And everywhere are people waiting in lines:  lines for the bathrooms; lines for Customs; lines to check baggage; lines to pass through security; lines to board the airplanes; and even lines inside the airplanes.  Belén and I played I Spy and In my Grandmother's Trunk while we were waiting in line to check our luggage.  We got sillier and sillier, until Bé said that in her grandmother's trunk she packed a rubber duck wearing her grandma's lipstick.  Then my lemonade came out my nose and we had to stop playing.

Our luggage was weighed and whisked away on a conveyer belt.  I asked Belén if I could ride on it, but she said that I might not be able to jump off in time to find my way back.  Instead she pulled out her phone and showed me a video of Rick Mercer riding the conveyor belts at the Vancouver Airport.  He had a special pass so that he could go anywhere in the airport ... and they even let him drive a firetruck! 



The jet bridge is attached to our airplane. It's almost time to board!



Waiting in line for boarding.

The flight from Madrid to Mexico City takes twelve hours.  We left at 12:20 a.m.  Nobody ever let me stay up until midnight before, but I wasn't even tired.  Everybody else was yawning, though; and as soon as the airplane had taken off and headed west across the Atlantic Ocean, most of the passengers went to sleep.


   

Our flight path from Madrid to Mexico City.

Twelve hours is a very long time to be shut into a metal cylinder flying eleven thousand metres above the ocean.  There wasn't anything to see out the window except for a flashing light out on the very tip of the wing.  Finally I curled up on the seat, pretended that sound of the engines was actually the sound of Noa purring beside me, and finally drifted off to sleep.

Much later, after Belén had woken me up so I could have an omelette and croissant for breakfast, my ears started to pop.  I forgot to tell you about that.  Whenever a plane takes off or gets ready to land, your ears start to hurt.  As soon as you swallow, they make this strange popping sound and you feel better right away.  It doesn't last, though.  I have to swallow every couple of minutes when our altitude is changing.  It wasn't my ears that bothered me as much as the fact that we were landing already.  It was still dark outside!  I knew that our flight took twelve hours, so we weren't supposed to land in Mexico City until it was noon.  Unless we were in the Yukon instead of Mexico, we were landing too soon!  Maybe we were crashing!  Nobody else looked worried, but maybe grown-up ears didn't pop the way mine did; and maybe they didn't know that we were falling out of the sky before we'd even finished brushing croissant crumbs off our laps.

Bélen certainly wasn't looking worried.  She was calmly completing a form that one of the flight attendants had been distributing, stating that we were bringing nothing of value into Mexico.  The pilot - who didn't sound worried either - spoke over the intercom in Spanish and English, telling us that we were beginning our descent to Mexico City.  But how was that possible?

It turns out that the time in Spain is seven hours ahead of the time in Mexico, and six hours ahead of the time in Ontario.  Because of the time difference, we were landing at 5:45 in the morning in Mexico ... even though back in Madrid it was 12:45 in the afternoon.  In Spain the sun was already high in the sky and Belén's friends were having lunch, while in Mexico the sun hadn't even risen yet.

A tall flight attendant with a shaved head was collecting our breakfast trays, when all of a sudden there was a scream from the front of the plane.  I looked up and another flight attendant was waving frantically at the attendant beside us.  He dropped the tray and rushed to the front of the plane, another attendant behind him.  Everyone else became absolutely silent.  I looked up at Belén, and she had both hands pressed against her mouth.  Something was very, very wrong.  The flight attendant with the shaved head was pulling a man up to his feet.  He got his arms around the man from behind, and lifted him right off the ground with a jerk.  He did it again.  Then all we could see was the backs of flight attendants for a minute.  Nobody else in the whole plane moved or spoke.  I think they had stopped breathing.  Finally one of the attendants turned around to face us and put both thumbs up.  Everybody on the plane started clapping and crying, and there were tears on Bé's cheeks.

"What happened?" I asked.  "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong and everything's right", answered Belén.  It turned out that one of the passengers had choked on his breakfast, and the attendant had reacted quickly and done the Heimlich manoeuvre.  He had saved that passenger's life. 

Bé had just given me a stick of gum to help my ears when the flight attendant with the shaved head returned to our seats.  Bé congratulated him, and so did all the other passengers.  Then the attendant (he said that his name was Carlos) whispered that the Captain had invited me to come up to the cockpit to watch the plane land.  Carlos put me in his shirt pocket, and we went back up the aisle to the nose of the airplane.  Before we entered the cockpit, he told me that I had to stay absolutely quiet and not move until I was given permission.  Carlos strapped me into the jump seat, and went off to make sure that all the passengers had fastened their seatbelts properly.

Mexico City at Night

This is what I saw from the jump seat - my first view of Mexico.  It was awesome of Carlos and the flight crew to let me come up and see it this way.  My favourite part was watching the blue lights that mark the runway come up to meet us.

Now we've passed through Customs, been met at the Arrivals lounge by Belén's friends, and been whisked to their house on the other side of the city.  They're having lunch on the patio, but I'm going to bed ... after all, I've been up all night!

love,
Katie

 

A Mallorcan Christmas

One of the best-loved Christmas traditions in Spanish-speaking countries is the pesebre.  Pesebres are nativity scenes, but they're much more detailed than the crèches that we set up in Canada.  Many of them have a background made of paper or cloth, and have landscapes made of moss and stones and twigs.  Each one is not just a nativity scene, but a perfect little world.  Belén showed me her favourite one, where all the little models are wearing traditional Mallorcan clothes.  After that all I wanted to do was go look for pesebres.  Each one is different, but I especially liked the ones with the sheep and donkeys.  I pretended that I could make myself super-small and go play with them.  Here's a video of another pesebre.  Which part of it do you like best?



A typical pesebre.  My favourite part was the windmill. 

I could have spent the whole day just learning about pesebres, but Belén had friends coming over for a Christmas lunch.  I helped Bé decorate a little tabletop Christmas tree, and then set the cutlery and folded the napkins while she arranged the rest of the table. 

 

This tree is just my size!



Christmas Eve lunch.

I knew that Santa Claus doesn't make many stops in Mallorca.  Instead, the Three Kings bring presents for everyone on January 6th.  I hadn't written a letter to Santa this year, so I was surprised when Belén showed me two tiny stockings.

"Where are those from?", I asked.  You'll never believe this, but it turned out that Flat Sally stayed with Belén too!  A friend of theirs in Jerusalem had made a tiny stocking for each of them, but Flat Sally had left her stocking behind to keep Bé's stocking company.  I didn't think Santa would bother to visit Mallorca just for me; but just in case, I hung the little green stocking up for me and the little blue stocking up for Noa.  There on the Christmas tree, the two stockings were still keeping each other company. 

 



 

In the morning, the tiny stockings were bulging.  Santa had come after all! A mysterious piece of string poking out of the top of Noa's stocking turned out to be the tail of a catnip mouse.  In my own stocking was a miniature Spanish-English dictionary, some Mexican coins, a flashlight for reading in my envelope, and of course different candies.  Under the tree was another present: a game of Uno!

 

 

 

By now it was time to pack up my envelope, cuddle against Noa one last time, hug Belén's dad, and say goodbye to Mallorca.  First we boarded a short-haul plane to Madrid.  Bé and I had a window seat, so I could make a video of our takeoff.  (It was SO much more comfortable to be in a seat with somebody to talk to than all by lonesome inside a dark envelope.)  We watched the lights of Palma disappear behind us, until there was nothing under the airplane's wings but the inky blackness of the Mediterranean Sea.  Soon we could see the lights of Spain up ahead, and after only an hour and a half our plane touched down at Madrid.  Once we landed, it was hard to see much, but you might like this video anyway. 

 

 

Now, after only a week in Spain, I'm on my way back across the Atlantic.  It used to take the old sailors three months to sail from Spain to Mexico - but Bé and I will be in Mexico tomorrow!

 

love,

Katie

 



Mallorca and the Mediterannean

Sydney to Palma, Mallorca

Mallorca is an island between the coasts of Spain and Africa, in the Mediterranean Sea.  It's the biggest of a whole group of islands called the Balearics.  After I went through Customs and Immigration (whenever you leave one country and enter another one you have to have your passport stamped and they ask you what you're bringing into the country), Belén met me at the airport.  Belén is absolutely awesome; she let me ride on the railing all the way down the moving sidewalk in the airport.  I made this video so you could feel what it was like.


The famous sign marking the city of Palma

The very first stamp in my passport!


You would not believe the difference between the climate in Cape Breton and the climate here.  The airport was air-conditioned, but once we went outside the air was warm and summery, and palm trees were growing across the street.  I packed away my hat and mittens and parka, and dug out my summer clothes.  The smell of the sea was everywhere, just the way it is at Sydney ... but this was a warm, gentle Mediterranean breeze, not the icy jabs of the wind off the North Atlantic.  Every now and then I'd catch a whiff of chocolate and almonds - the smells of Mallorca at Christmas time.






Belén took me shopping for groceries first.  She loves cooking, and takes extra time to arrange the food before serving so that it looks like something you'd see in a magazine.  She asked me to choose what I like best to eat.  Because she's a vegan (that means she doesn't eat meat or anything made from animal products, like cheese or yoghurt), I only chose food that we could eat together.  I'd never seen purple carrots before, so I picked those out right away.

Shopping for groceries.  Look at the purple carrots!



Belén bought a bunch of fresh spinach and asked me to carry it.  I don't like spinach, but I didn't want to be rude.  Then she explained that the spinach was for some friends of hers.  Whew!  The friends turned out to be a pair of swans at a nearby pond.  People bring them stale bread (as long as it isn't mouldy, because mouldy bread can poison swans), but what the swans really like is spinach!  I had no idea.  They ate all the spinach right away, and then swam off to have a word with a little boy about the cookies in his hand.



Feeding the swans

I had to take my shoes off for this photo!





We came home along the harbour, past miles and miles of fishing nets spread out to dry in the sun.  Those nets didn't come from a hardware store; the fishermen buy the twine and make their own nets by hand.  I could smell fish and dry leaves.  It looks quiet in this photo, but you could hear the distant traffic, the wind in the palms, the little waves lapping against the hulls of all the boats, and all sorts of little tapping noises as the boats rocked in the harbour.  I wanted to go on one of the boats, but Belén didn't know any of the fishermen and I was too shy to just go and ask somebody.

 


My feet were tired by the time we got home.  Belén had arranged for two friends of hers to meet me.  Snowmen!  They were just the same size as the snowman I had made back in Nadine's back yard.  Do you see the little poinsettia in the picture?  She put the snowmen there to remind me of where I'd come from, and the poinsettia there to remind me of where we're going - to Mexico, which is where poinsettias come from.  She says that they grow wild in the mountains.






Going to bed with Noa.

For me, the best part of staying with Bé was meeting her friend, Noa the cat.  Noa spends at least an hour a day keeping her fur pure white, and when she's curled up asleep she looks like a snowdrift.  Belén had made up a bed for me in the guest room, but I wanted to sleep with Noa instead.  She is soft and warm, and when she purrs me to sleep I'm never scared of the dark.


Belén's father belongs to Noa.  One day he went to the lumber yard where she lived, and Noa made an enormous fuss over him.  She rubbed against him, and purred, and leaped onto his lap as soon as he sat down.  The owners of the lumber yard offered to let him take Noa home with him.  At first he didn't think that they really meant it, but finally they convinced him to take her.  By then, Noa had disappeared.  Belén's dad and the lumberyard people looked everywhere for her, but she had vanished.  Sadly, Belén's father opened his car door to drive home - and there was Noa, curled up in the back.  She'd already decided to go home with him, and jumped into the open window.  Since Noa already has a special person, I thought it was really generous of her to let me sleep with her at night.

That reminds me, it's bedtime.  I'm tired, and Christmas is nearly here.  I have to get my beauty sleep!

The Plaza of Palma, all decorated for Christmas.

 

I'm not the only person having adventures, you know.

 I had a chance to check my email this morning, and found emails from three of my friends:  Flat Justin, Flat Casey and Flat McKenzie.  Flat Justin went to visit the construction site at Queen's University in Kingston, and Flat McKenzie went to Ottawa.  Flat Casey went farthest of all: right out to Vancouver Island and then by plane from Victoria to Ottawa.  They all got together for a party before Christmas.  Flat Casey says that he's been learning to play the clarinet!

Here are some of the photos that they sent me.

Flat Justin, Flat McKenzie and Flat Casey at New Year's

 

Installing the security camera above Queen's University. 
Flat Justin's safety vest and hat are waaay too big for him!

Flat Justin at the controls of the excavator.

Flat Casey explores a houseboat community on Vancouver Island.

 

Flat Justin says that this is a Caterpillar 324 excavator at the Queen's construction site.
 I would have just said it was a digger, but he says that it's important to put in its real name.

Flat Casey helps herd the Muscovy ducks at the farm on Vancouver Island.

Flat Casey has his first lesson in Zimbabwe music -
how to make a safe and controlled ascent of your drum.

Almost home - landing at Pearson International Airport in Toronto
after a long flight from Victoria, British Columbia.



Flat Casey looking down at Toronto harbour as his
plane heads eastward toward Ottawa. 



Ariel and Flat McKenzie waiting at the Ottawa airport for Flat Casey.

Flat McKenzie looks north over the Rideau Canal
and the Ottawa River towards the Gatineau.

Flat McKenzie visits the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.



Farewell to Nova Scotia

My snowman and me.  My hat fits him perfectly!

 It's hard having to say goodbye, but Belén was expecting me in Spain, and all too soon it was time to say goodbye.  I had a lovely time rearranging the crèche with Léo every day (he likes to drive Baby Jesus around in his firetruck); learning to sing Feliz Navidad with Léo's papa, Edwin (because he's from Ecuador, he can sing Christmas carols in Spanish and Kichwa); and reading more Christmas stories with them both while Nadine went out to play soccer. 

We played outside, too.  One day Léo and I made snowmen in the backyard.  I couldn't find a hat that fit my snowman, so I gave him mine.  He was rocking my hat, so I decided to let him keep it for a while.

I was really, really sorry that I'd let him keep that hat when Nadine and I went out the next morning to visit Nadine's Mi'kmaq friends on land held by the Eskasoni First Nation.  They live by the Bras d'Or Lakes, which are much saltier than our lakes.  I couldn't understand what Nadine meant until I tasted the water.  It really does taste salty!  She says that the ocean tastes even saltier, and that the Bras d'Or lakes are salty because the ocean water got into the lakes.

My peaked cap keeps me toasty warm beside Bras d'Or.

The wind was absolutely frigid when we started our walk.  I so wished that I haven't left my toasty hat behind.  Luckily, a Mi'kmaq elder came out of her house to say that she had a present for me.  It was a cozy hat, lined with red flannel and toasty warm.  The Mi'kmaq people used to wear these all the time (now most of them wear toques in the winter unless it's a special occasion).  She said that it would remind me of the First Peoples of Nova Scotia, and that perhaps I could come back in the summer and learn more about their culture. 

I asked her whether she wore hats like this when she was a little girl, and she said that yes, she had.  She didn't grow up here, though.  When she was a little girl she lived in a different part of Nova Scotia.  The government made all the Mi'kmaq people in the area move to this reserve.  After her parents left, an Indian Agent burned down their house so that they couldn't go home.  I wish I could go back in time and fix things so that they didn't have to leave their home.

Our visit had certainly given me new things to think of.  I thought that people on Cape Breton Island were just Canadian, but they speak English and French and Gaelic and Mi'kmaq and they wear kilts and jingle dresses and eat pizza and pickled herring.  Edwin speaks Spanish (he taught me how to say "Buenos días" so that I could surprise Belén).  I even heard a language called Punjabi in the  Farmers' Market.  People seem to come to Cape Breton from all over the world.  Hmmm ... maybe doing things differently and sharing that with each other is what it means to be just Canadian. 

Memere and Pepere taught me a song called "Farewell to Nova Scotia" before Nadine, Edwin and Léo took me to the airport.  You can listen to it here.  I'm going to sing it to myself over and over again on the plane on the way to Spain. 

Now I'm leaving Canada behind, and not just Ontario.  Here I come, world!

love,
Katie