Tamales!!!

A few blocks from my house is Tamales Especiales. It is a sister and brother operation and they sell fresh made Tamales outside their home in the evenings from 6-9pm. For $2 I can get the best tamale I have ever had a nice hot cup of Atole, which is a corn based drink that is delicious. I guess they have been selling tamales for years but opened this new store front about 2 months ago. I am definitely becoming a regular!

Carrera Nocturna

Last night I ran the Carrera Nocturna 8km race at the UNAM campus with my friends Ivan and Carolina. About 3,000 people participated and the race was free if you are a current student or faculty member. The Alumni have to pay a $15 entry. Well, I didn't have any sort of identification or letter saying that I work at UNAM, but Carolina and Ivan pulled some strings and somehow I ended up with a fake CURP, which I needed to register. A CURP is more or less a social security number. I thought is was pretty funny but I was happy to be able to run in the race. Plus they gave everyone who ran a t-shirt and a medal. I feel special.
Oh yeah, the race finished in UNAM's Olympic stadium. I kind of felt like I was running the Bolder Boulder. It was fun to run into the stadium at night with the lights on. I don't have any pictures of the race because I didn't want to bring my camera so all you get is to see great pictures of the free t-shirt I got . . . and of course the medal too.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Yup, this slide is in Spanish. Tomorrow I am giving an hour long seminar on my PhD research in SPANISH. I have a whole set of scientific vocabulary words I need to nail down tonight. Wish me luck!!!

I Never Thought I'd Say This

But today was a beautiful day in Mexico City. It was in the low 70's, perfectly blue skies, and a breeze to clear out the pollution. I had to enjoy it so I left work early and headed home to my roof top terrace to do some work.

A Wonderful Weekend

As you can tell from the picture, I was pretty excited to find a new place to go running.
This is El Bosque de Tlalpan, which has very nice trails through a forest. It is extremely safe to run here and it was nice to run in what felt like the middle of nowhere.
Until I kept hearing all this shouting and came upon Six Flags. There are always reminders that I am living in the city.
After my run I was walking to find a taxi and came upon the artisan furniture market. Not only is the furniture they make impressive but the buildings throughout the market are amazing and the pictures definitely don't do it justice.
I also went to explore the Saturday art market at San Angel, which is another neighborhood similar to Coyoacan in Mexico City. Some very good artists display and sell their artwork throughout the town's plaza. I stayed in San Angel for a while drinking cappuccinos at a cafe along the plaza. It was very relaxing.
I also decided that after staying up to 5am on Friday night (these Mexicans believe in partying ALL night long) that I would take it easy on Saturday night. Luckily for me, pirated movies cost about $2 apiece. So I grabbed a few movies and headed home. Don't tell the pirating cops!

Today I went for another long run, but at UNAM. On Sunday's, the UNAM campus is almost entirely closed to traffic, which means a lot of cyclist come out to ride. It made me miss my bike! I spent the rest of the day getting fruit and veggies from the local market and bread from the local bakery. It was a perfect weekend.

My Commute to UNAM

Everyday, I take the metro to work. Specifically, I take line 3 (there are 11 lines in total) and I get on at the Coyoacan stop and get off at the farthest stop in the south of the city, Universidad. It takes me probably 5 mins to walk to the Coyoacan stop, 10 mins on the metro, and another 5 mins or so to walk to my office. Not a bad a commute in my opinion.
The best part of the commute is how much the above ticket cost, 2 pesos. At ~11 pesos to the dollar, that is $0.18/ride!

All work and no play

I have been working a lot this week and therefore have nothing exciting to post. But to keep all you blog readers reading, I thought I would post a couple pictures that didn't make the cut for previous posts.
This is the new UNAM Bicipuma (their mascot is the pumas) building. It is located right next to the largest subway stop on campus. Students, staff, and faculty can rent a bike for free and ride to anywhere on campus. Apparently the program is working well and the building won some sort of architectural award.
This is a repaving (i.e. re-cobbling) project of a street in Coyoacan. The amount of manual labor used in construction here is unbelievable.