Apartment, friends, and volcanic ash

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while BUT, I finally was able to move into my much awaited new apartment. I don't have any new pictures yet, but I will post some soon. The apartment is AMAZING and waiting for visitors.
Speaking of visitors, Luke and Nichole stayed with me in route to Oaxaca, Mexico. It was great to see some familiar faces and show them my neighborhood. Here they are in Plaza Santa Catarina.

Today I headed up to Paso de Cortes, which is about 3 hours outside of Mexico City at ~11,000ft between the two volcanoes Ixtaccihuatl (Ixta) and Popocatétl (Popo). I drove up there with Carolina to meet Ivan and Wolfgang who have been on the pass since Wednesday making measurements. The plan was to go for a nice mountain bike ride while there and get away from the pollution in Mexico City for a bit. However, Popo is active and spewed a lot of ash this morning. I don't have pictures of the ash event but will post one of Wolfgang's next week. Anyway, we rode our mountain bikes for a bit but between the fresh ash and dusty roads I couldn't handle it and we stopped riding.
Here is Carolina, Wolfgang, and Ivan eating some grub before we attempted our mountain bike ride.
Here is a picture of Popo later in the day after it spewed ash. You can still see the smoke though.