la mexicana

Sorry for posting overload this week. I have so many things lined up... it's either feast or famine in my archives!

Anyway, at this time last year I was living in Mexico (and at this time the year before, though a different city). I really enjoyed my time there overall, and recently discovering Dusana's blog (she just got back) has made me a bit nostalgic. Also, I realized I'd bought this dress at a street market the day before I left and had never gotten a chance to wear it/completely forgotten about it.

I never bought as many beautiful embroidered blouses as I meant to in Mexico. By and large, the stuff for sale in the city wasn't great. One time, Albert and I went to this little mountain village that was very picturesque and famous for it's embroidered blouses. I had big plans to stock up. But then our beetle fell into an enormous pothole on the mountain road which destroyed two tires. We managed to roll downhill to the nearest village (after discovering our spare tire was flat, haha) and get them replaced. But they only took cash, which pretty much wiped out most of the cash we'd brought. And they definitely weren't taking Visa in that village! So I had to content myself with some clearly sub-par $6 blouses instead of splashing out the big bucks ($20) on something really special. C'est la vie. ; ( I guess I'll just have to go back some day!





dress, necklace and skull from Mexico, charity shop belt, Calvin Klein from Winners shoes (old, gift)

P.S. Gratuitous beetle shot. I loved it, and it's the only time I've ever been or am likely to be a car owner (sort of). This was not on the occasion of the tires, however. Oh, also, our beetle was from 2001 (they only stopped making the old kind in Mexico in 2002)!



P.P.S. For a post actually wearing one of the aforementioned cheapo blouses, go to Tequila Sunshine

Flashback! Oaxaca 2009

This Halloween, I went as the Grinch. That is to say, I cancelled my party-appearance in the name of getting some work done, and unrepentantly watched Mad Men instead (I'm just starting Season 4 and if anyone tells me anything that happens I'll....); ) At the end of the day, I just don't like Halloween that much.

But as I made pretty clear all of last week, I do like the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, very much indeed. The two-day event of music, colour, food, and celebrating the memories of loved ones really strikes a chord with me. So I thought I'd share a few of the pictures I took of the festivities last year. My boyfriend and I drove to Oaxaca in our hilarious red beetle, which adds an hour onto every journey, and stayed for a few days soaking of the sights and the sounds (including the sounds of lots of American tourists... Oaxaca has been DISCOVERED). But anyway, it's a beautiful city and the celebrations were truly enthralling. Enjoy!






A sand sculpture of the cathedral mirrors the actual cathedral in the main square.


dancing and music in the streets


and costumes!


lots of souvenirs


I am run down by a ghostly horseman. ; )


we journey to the cemetery with the rest of the town




even in death there is competition for the best grave!




a musical procession through town


even skeletons like tacos!

Oh, and for an authentic Mexican take on Day of the Dead, everyone should check out Ana's blog Coffee Break. She's been doing lots of posts on the subject, and her blog is also good for beautiful pictures of Guadalajara!

alas poor yorick

For what reason do we audit classes, but to skip them at our leisure? This is my way of saying that Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Migration isn't happening tomorrow morning at 9 am. Especially not after homemade cannelloni and a few bottles of wine as a housewarming/thank you for having me dinner with the girls I spend two weeks with at the beginning of my time in London. Good times, but my head is too fuzzy for ethnological approaches to anything now...

So instead, I'm just going to mention that later this week is one of my favourite holidays--and no, I don't mean Halloween! Actually, I kind of dislike Halloween, since I find cobbling together a costume quite difficult from a traveller's point of view. One of my favourite holidays is instead, the day after, the Mexican festival of Day of the Dead.



I love Day of the Dead because it is many things. It's colourful and musical and energetic, involving dressing in costumes and dancing around town and drinking hot chocolate, and it's also reflective and commemorative in a happy way. People in Mexico make shrines in memory of the dead, often including photographs, sugar skulls, the ubiquitous purple and orange flowers, and any items that could be considered to represent the loved one. When I asked one of my students last year about the day itself she replied, "Well, my mother likes to go visit her parents in the cemetary," and I generally found the whole attitude, the acceptance of death and the celebration of memory, to be a refreshing change from our Western culture of pretending unpleasantness doesn't exist, and sanitizing everything. Plus, just to be shallow again for a moment, the decorations can be exceptional!

Here's a makeshift shrine with many typical elements I managed to get together last year, when we were living in Puebla:


We went to a very typical place to celebrate the day itself, but more on that later! I've got to go read about global migration, or not...

are you looking at me?

Behave yourself... because sometimes the trees really do have eyes... hehe. ; )

I realize that probably none of you believe that I'm actually in England at all, since I'm still uploading pictures of Mexico, but I'm actually really glad I had so many stockpiled. In addition to my continued homelessness (ending tonight), my camera is out of action due to my accidentally deleting the memory card last week. The photos are recoverable, but... oh, it's a long story. Anyway, I won't be showing you pictures of sunny October Greenwich until some time in November, and in the meantime I need to go buy a new memory card.

It's a shame that I didn't have a camera this weekend actually, because the weather here is absolutely beautiful. Seriously, it's been like Guadalajara, but without the humidity and storms!

Anyway, these pictures are actually from Guadalajara, from my endlessly photogenic former neighbourhood (Avenida Libertad, I miss you)!













Outfit:
jeans: Zara
t-shirt: Smart Set
shoes: Blowfish
earrings: from Mexico City
sunglasses: Toronto airport years ago---I think!

guanajuato part 2: colour-blocked lounging

Here are the rest of the photos, (the outfit shots) from my day in Guanajuato. It's funny that this playsuit hasn't made an appearance before, since I must have worn it about twice a week all summer long. I resisted buying a playsuit until this summer, but now there's no looking back; they are the world's most comfortable summer staple... until it's time to go to the bathroom.

This one (with the buttons changed) is from Zara, a shop which I generally kind of hate (I know this is sacreligious to some of you). However, it's one of the only shops in Mexico that isn't horrible, so I did acquire a few pieces from there this summer. The day before I left, a vintage shop opened directly under my apartment, the only one I'd ever seen in Guadalajara. Grrrr.




One enormous cactus!






Buying "gorditas de nata," which roughly means "little cream fatties," on the street. Mmmm, I ate so many, I was in danger of turning into one!







Outfit:
playsuit: Zara (altered)
blouse, belt and bag: stolen from my mother
shoes: Aldo
sunglasses: Sanborns

guanajuato part 1: a classic mexican city

I have sooo many pictures from this one day a few weeks ago when my boyfriend and I decided to go to Guanajuato, one of the few tourist spots in the immediate (5 hours or so from Guadalajara) that we hadn't hit up already. We were there for about 20 hours in total, but we really enjoyed the tumbled collection of colourful houses, churches, and steep winding roads of this mountain city.

To limit the number of pictures per post, today you get travel shots and tomorrow pictures of me lounging poutingly against a variety of colourful walls, channeling a '70s vibe!











El callejón del beso, or the alleyway of the kiss, was surprisingly in guanajuato. I remember studying a story about the legend of a couple you stole kisses across the narrow alley back in Spanish class in Canada. Kind of fun to run into the real thing!




Wires are an inevitable part of picture taking in Mexican towns!


Note the cactus springing out of one tower...


This was a 16th century mine, and the source of Guanajuato's wealth. There was an enormous, unphotographable pit at the top. which we stared down for a while, fascinated and a bit nauseated...