Snow and Sustenance

It snowed several inches in New Haven on Thursday, which was very lovely indeed. I am glad to hear it is snowing at home as well. I was in the library that morning as it started to come down, and I watched, mesmerized, as it slowly piled up in the courtyard outside. Later that day, I went to the Morse kitchen to help cook for a Swedish Santa Lucia feast that was being prepared there, which was very fun. I also went to La Casa, the Latino student center, for Posadas. There were tamales and Mexican hot chocolate. I went outside and shivered and sang the Posadas. Then back out into the sleet, as it had become at that point, to the Swedish feast, which included meat balls (of course), potato gratin, a red cabbage-apple dish, which was very good, gingerbread cookies, and apple cake. Yum.

Last night I went to dinner at Toni Dorfman, my freshman adviser's, house. There were about fifteen students there. I walked there with another girl in Morse. It was about a 25 minute walk up Orange street, but it was nice to take a walk outside of the Yale bubble. It seemed like a sweet neighborhood, and I didn't fall on my ass walking on the icy sidewalks, which I was glad of. The post-dinner entertainment (after more apple cake) entailed our acting out scenes from a show called Seventy scenes of Halloween, which seems bizarre and very funny.


This morning I walked to the Farmer's Market, which is still happening OUTSIDE here--! It's a lovely sunny day, clear and cold. The campus looks like all the shot of Yale you see in the brochures encouraging you to come here.. At the Market I got a few gifts and a few carrots, then walked to Fuel, my favorite little coffee shop here. I heard honking and looked up. Overhead flew a V of geese, gleefully heading south.

D.F.--There Was Chile There

The seminar I took this semester on the Aztecs took a trip to Mexico City (aka Distrito Federal)this past weekend. It was wonderful, and entirely subsidized (lovely!).

We left JFK Friday night around nine. We were supposed to have left some five hours earlier, but due to some gruesome-sounding medical emergency on the plane coming in, we were delayed. We arrived in Mexico City around 12:30 am, where we promptly went to our hotel and collapsed. The hotel, an adorable little place called Casa Gonzales, was absolutely adorable--quaint and comfy, nicely tucked away. Granted, there were some hot water issues, but we were served a lovely breakfast in the morning. Granola and yogurt is so much better in Mexico, for some reason.


Due to our limited time there, our days were jam-packed. On Saturday, we arose early (fine with me), ate, and were at the Templo Mayor site shortly after nine. By some stroke of luck, Master Miller, our professor, had gotten us in to see the new Tlaltecuhtli stone found at the Templo Mayor, a giant depiction of the Aztec Earth goddess, not yet revealed to the public--wow. We also got to fo into the storage room of the Templo Mayor museum, to see a few other new finds. It pays to travel with someone with connections (Master Miller has written several books on Mesoamerican Art, and has done extensive research in Mexico).


From there we went to lunch at a very Mexican place called La Blanca. I am partial to Mole, I will say... Then back to the Templo Mayor museum; it was bizarre and wonderful to see all the things we had been talking about all semester, real and RIGHT THERE. We took a quick trip through the Cathedral on the Zocalo, which, like everything else in Mexico city, is sinking into the ground... That's what happens when you build on a lake... Saturday night we went to Coyoacan for dinner, a neighborhood in the southern part of the city, where the Spanish retired to after conquering Tenochtitlan. We at at a very good restaurant called Los Danzantes, a member of Slow Food Mexico, which is cool. I had fish with green mole. When in Mexico... you know. Claudia, one of Master Miller's grad students and our guide, then took us to get really good hot chocolate, and then to see the house Cortez had presumably built for La Malinche. Very cool. Coyoacan was quiet at that hour (around 10:30); our group was one of the only ones out.

Sunday was equally busy. First thing we did was go to El Museo de la Anthropologia, apparently THE museum to go to in DF. And understandably so. It was full of artifacts, again, so many of the things we had seen photos of. My favorite was a beautiful greenstone (jade) squash, suprisingly enough--and the drunken rabbit (there's an Aztec myth, part of the creation story, about drunken rabbits on the moon. I kid you not.).


From there we went to Teotihuacan, a site that actually predates the Aztecs. It is incredible for its size. The city encompassed I don't know how many square miles at its peak, but it was a lot. It was something like 125,000 people--bigger that Santa Fe by far. The pyramids themselves are massive, 250 tall. I climbed one of them, the Temple of the Sun, which affords an incredible vista of the surrounding area, Wal-Mart included, unfortunately.


After Teotihuacan, where we spent several hours, we drove back into the city, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Speaking of mind-bogglingly huge, Mexico City really is. Driving out to "Teo," as Master Miller calls it, it goes on forever, it seems. There are something like 25 million inhabitants, which goes beyong my comprehension, frankly. Anyway, back to the Basilica: it was great to be there, just a few day before the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, on the 12th, which is a HUGE holiday in Mexico. There was a big Christmas-light image of Our Lady, and plenty of people in the Basilica, though not as many as we were anticipating. We got to see the Tilma, the original piece of cloth on which her image appeared. We also got to walk around the market there, which was a lot of fun.

From there we went to eat tacos al carbon--yum--and then back to the hotel. We had to arise at five the next morning to return...

I really do love Mexico. Things are so vibrant there, so much richer and full of flavor--and I'm not just talking about the food. It was such a fast weekend; considering how much we did, it could easily have been stretched into a week. It was wonderful, though, and I hope to be able to return, especially at this time of year, when the weather is so lively. Que Viva!

Auditory Curiosites

I went to the bank this morning to deposit a check, only to realize I had forgotten my checkbook and didn't know my account number. Piss. Luckily, the woman at the counter was kind enough not to hassle me about it. I filled out the form she gave me--name, address, etc, slowly realizing that I was hearing a sitar and tabla from somewhere. I looked around for it. There was a small stereo on the table with the complimentary coffee, playing Indian music. It was a strange thing to be pervading a Bank of America, but wonderful.

Last week they played a Bach prelude on the bells in Harkness Tower, followed by Eleanor Rigby. Later that night someone walking down the street below my window was whistling the Queen of the Night's Aria from The Magic Flute.

Back from Break

...both from this Blog (although that was unintentional) and from school. Thanksgiving break, which was already two weeks ago, was wonderful. I spent a whole 10 days at home, baked a LOT, worked a little, enjoyed the snow immensely, and ate enchiladas almost every day...

On my flight home, on the 16th, I was supposed to go through Charlotte, NC, then Phoenix, then an to Burque, a roundabout way if ever there was one. I was waiting at my gate in the Hartford airport at 5:45 am, across from two women discussing handbags, when they paged "passenger Kwin-tana" to the desk. The flight leaving from the next gate was flying directly to Phoenix. "We can get you on this one, and should be able to get you to Albuquerque by 2:30." Well, lovely! I don't know what prompted that unexpected magnanimity, but it was certainly welcome.


Thanksgiving was a quiet and satisfying affair. We had all the normal foodstuffs. I made the mashed potatoes and two pumpkin pies. There was also sweet potato pie and apple pie with whiskey sauce(!). It was a normal Holiday in that it entailed running around to see various and sundry relatives, first this one then the next, then dinner at Nana's, then more relatives... It's more fun that way, really. We still had plenty of time to eat a very good lunch at Nana's, and get into the never-ending conversation about how old her dogs are. I opted out this time, which took great self control.


The day after Thanksgiving it snowed, which was absolutely glorious. It started coming down the night of, and looked very promising from the start. I was snowed in the next morning, and was late for work, which allowed for a bit of frolicking--lovely!


Graham and I made it up to Taos as well. He hadn't been since before he moved here. It was a quiet cloudy day and absolutely freezing. We walked for ten minutes and couldn't feel our faces, only to find the restaurant we were headed for was closed--bugger. We wandered into a shop called Wabi Sabi (of which I am a great fan), where the shop keeper offered us cups of hot tea and cookies, God bless her. It was very good timing on her part.

It was cloudy until about three, until the sun broke through and was glorious. The light in Taos is always something exceptional. It is somehow at once very rich and very fleeting, both strong and tremulous. You know what I mean, if you've been there.

So now I am back at Yale, after missing my shuttle coming back and having to spend the night at the Hartford airport. That was a pisser. Hartford is one of those airports that gets pretty quiet at night, too... Alas! I made it back regardless. I've got quite a bit of work to contend with over the next two weeks, but I am going to Mexico this weekend with my Aztecs seminar, which will be very fun. And entirely subsidized. Lovely!