Puebla

A week or two after Carnaval de Veracruz, we went on a school trip to Puebla, a large city near the center of Mexico. The trip was sponsored by the UDLAP, or Universidad de Las Americas Puebla, and thus we spent the majority of the day there.

The architectural style is Mexican Colonial, and there are gardens everywhere. This first one was full of cacti.

A group of my classmates sitting down while waiting in line to register.

Juan Omar and I

Another garden with many cacti.

While we were waiting to register, I went off to take pictures in the garden. On the side opposite the cacti, there were plots of flowers, as well as a sculpture, a fountain, a big tree, and some wheat. There were perhaps some thousands of visiting students there that day, and an interesting thing happened to me while I was taking these pictures. A girl I of course did not know, approached me and talked to me for a few minutes. She had become interested when she saw me taking pictures of flowers.

After taking a tour late in the afternoon, I stumbled upon this marching band performance. They are a group of middle and high school students in the area who come to the campus to rehearse. They are apparently famous in Mexico, supposedly one of the best in the country. I was not very impressed, but that is normal here. From here, however, I met an engingeering student in the University who plays violin in the orchestra, and was directed by him to a tour of the music facilities. These were also not very impressive, and their percussion studio consisted of two timpani, a two marimbas, a xylophone, and a few sundry parts of a drumset.

I spent the afternoon cooling off and immersing myself in this beautiful library, which surprisingly contains mostly English books. I met another girl there who is from Australia, a student there who I guess has half Mexican parentage. Once we were getting ready to leave, I went to buy a delicious strawberries and cream paleta with Juan Omar, and we got on the bus and went to the mall. The mall was lame, in that it didnt have a bookstore. It was very upscale and everything was expensive and fancy, though.

I got struck with allergies during the day, and was feeling fairly bad during the ride home. The next few days I recovered from a cold and then endured a week of aggravated heartburn.