Professor friends and subsequent illness...

...are two things that are unrelated, but have happened to me in the last 30 hours. So yesterday was super great. I believe I left you all right before Linet, Molly and I went out for yet another recorrido with Professor Kippner, i.e. our new best friend Jim. We set out from the Casa around 1:30, and spent the next four hours going to museums, walking in the perfect breezy sunshine, eating delicious food (that may or may not be culprit of my apparent illness today), going to more museums, and then going to a café IN a museum, and becoming best friends with Jim. Basically, it was great to connect with the city more.

Me and Molls in front of Diego's Dreams of Plaza thing on a Sunday Afternoon. Kind of a big deal.

We saw a Diego Rivera mural, Sunday afternoons in the Something Plaza, with tons of important Mexican people that I have yet to learn about. At lunch I asked him for his life story, essentially - at least the part that got him involved in the Casa. Basically, he was here during the 1985 earthquake, which was a super important event in contemporary Mexican history. It was pretty deadly, killing a total of around 30,000 people, and basically the government didn't do anything about it. Nico told us they sent out the police and the army to guard banks and things, and literally all of the rescue and reconstruction efforts were initiated and organized by citizens and civil organizations. Hmm...

The chicas outside Bellas Artes - it's a big deal.

But so. We had another really great conversation at the café, actually a lot about the Bi-Co, the Honor Code, interesting things to study, etc. We're all getting better at joking around with him, slash Linet and Molly are following my lead. I was a little worried about them going without me today, but of course they were great, because as Linet says, "We're biffls." He pretty much knows everything about everything here, and as we all know I'm a huge history nerd, so I'm loving it. It's so crazy how centuries - millenia, really - of historical big deals have gone down in the exact same spaces. Anyway. We got home after strolling back in more perfect weather, and got to hang out for a bit before we went back downstairs for community dinner. Sasha, a year-long volunteer who is AWESOME, got sushi things together, and it was deeeeelicious. Then we hung out until Jim came downstairs to tell us history stories. Agnita, possibly the precious child on the planet, 3 year old daughter of Nico and Jill, was eating her dinner. She took a break to gallop over to me, and in response to my greeting, "Quiero un beso!" gave me a grin and a hug, and I died from her cuteness. So then I snuggled down on the couch in the dining room (dying of a stomach ache, actually) to listen to stories about the Mayans and the Aztecs, which Jim knew I wanted to learn about. So yay.

Awesome purple house I will live in someday.

Linet and I then spent the next few hours watching Modern Family. I don't know what happened to me, but I just laid there dying of tummy pains. I didn't even get sick or anything, it's just that, as Phil Dunphey so artfully explained it, "THERE IS AN ALIEN INSIDE OF ME!!" But whatever. I woke up this morning with flu-like symptoms, so I spent the day today reading the book Jim gave us, sleeping, and hoping this isn't some unknown disease that's actually going to kill me. But everyone was super nice to me, asking how I was and bringing me things. Linet and Molly kept refilling my water bottle and Hayley brought me soup. I said to Linet, "This is great, thanks Mom. I have double Moms." And she said, "You're about to have like 15 moms, everyone was asking after you!" D'aww. So that was nice. And now the three of us have just been hanging out for the last few hours. Linet keeps cracking us up with her faces and stories, and the particular vocabulary she uses to tell these ridiculous tales. I am the hugest fan of my roomie. Ugh, so I'm just hoping I wake up tomorrow and I'm just magically better, which Hayley said will probably happen. I still have grandiose plans to tell you guys about the history and cool things I'm learning. OH, I'll take a second at the end of this entry for some general observations slash info:

1) I have skyped with Linet's mom multiple times, who is Cuban and jovial and excited that I speak Spanish. I have learned that Cuban spanish accents means that you don't say s's, which Linet keeps denying, so we'll just see.

2) In general, people are shorter here. I felt weird noticing that, so I asked Jim about it, and he said that people of indigenous decent probably are shorter on average, from thousands of years living at such high altitude.

My favorite people walkin to check out a church.

3) Some buildings are DEFINITELY slanted, because the city is built on the bed of the lake that used to surround Tenochtilán, the island Aztec capital city. Basically the soil is super soft, so buildings are sinking into the ground at different rates. Great.

4) Linet and Molly are getting used to the way Quakers begin meals - holding hands. And they're trying to figure out what the squeezing means - "Who starts it? Are WE supposed to start it? What does it MEAN?"

5) We're reading this book called "El Monstruo" by John Ross about the history of Mexico City. I am totally scandalized by how many different groups conquered and exploited other ones, and it's making me really concerned about human morality.

The last thing I want to say is just an expression of appreciation. I'm feeling really held and loved by a lot of wonderful people across the U.S. (and across the pond). Oo! Got to Skype with Josefina the other day! Soooo great. My Spanish is still so rusty. I'ma work on it though. Anyway. I am super sleepy.

Love to all,
me