0

lo siento mis amigos

Ok so I know I said I would talk about the rest of my time in Mexico, but life caught up to me and now Mexico seems very far away. So much so that I don't think I could give an interesting and accurate description of my trip. Therefore, I will post my favorite pictures. Some are taken by me and some are not. Some are beautiful and some are hilarious. Please enjoy.
[photo credit: Melissa Rivera]

[photo credit: Melissa Rivera]
[photo credit: Melissa Rivera]

DF, Te amo.
0

Qué Bueno!

Arriving in the the Mexico City airport with Jason Mraz by my side was probably the best way to enter a my first foreign country. Although I have been to Canada, all those who accompanied me will agree that Toronto hardly counts as 'foreign'. Nonetheless, my first real visit abroad started out in the best way possible.

After my first night in my hotel, I was ready to go downtown to Centro Historico to meet the rest of the kids on in this program. After a brief spell of being utterly lost in the biggest city in North America resulting in a minor panic attack, I found my way to the place where I was meeting everyone.

We started out the day by getting our super-secret press passes and security clearence badges, and then headed out for a tour of all the buildings we would be going to this week. Long story short, I've never walked so much in my life. The events aren't far away per se, but man is Mexico City a crazy place. Its like taking the most expensive hotels and office buildings of Chicago and dropping them in the middle of Harlem in NYC. The historic distric (Centro Historico) is packed full with beautiful Catholic churches with massive bleeding Jesuses and Mary sculptures on the wall, as well as a constant flow of devout Mexican Catholics praying to Virgen de Guadalupe or just buying tiny Jesus figures for their mantles. Also in this area is Alameda Central, the massive park full of fountains and history. Because Mexico's independencia is September 15th, the whole city is full of green, red and white, including the Plaza de la Constitucion, which is two blocks from my hotel.


Our last stop was a tour of the building that houses the largest newspaper in all of Mexico, La Reforma. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the building itself is a pretty bold statement in my opinion. It towers over anything else in sight.


We ended the day pretty casually at a concert with a 'Japanese rock star' named Sinshi, and the cutest little chico Mexicano I've ever seen in my life.

Of course after that 'concert' is when me and two of my newly met friends bounced to go see Jason Mraz live in Mexico City, courtesy of the man himself who gave me the free tix. it was amazing, to say the least. And in my next blog: the conference! Madness, mayhem and Mexico City!


0

Did that really just happen?

Alright so this didn't just happen, but it had just happened when I started this entry. I have a bit of free time right now so I'm going to tell the greatest story ever told.

So I'm sitting in the Dallas airport waiting for my group to start boarding to Mexico City, when I look up and see someone walking by with their hood up and I think, ok, that is Jason Mraz. For some reason I looked down again, probably because my heart stopped and I thought I was going to faint, but when I look back up he's gone. So I pace around for like 10 minutes freaking out thinking "that HAD to be him or I am crazy". Well as the very last people are getting on, he walks back and sits down on a chair near my terminal. So I walk up and say "Jason Mraz?" to which he responds, "Hey, whats up? What's your name?". WHAT? So we talk for a bit and then I tell him that I actually am getting on this plane and have to leave right now when he goes "Yeah, me too." WHAT??? So we board the flight together as he asks me if I'm going to his show in Mexico City the next night, which I had no idea about, and when I tell him no, he says that if he gets my name written down after the flight he will get me into the concert! So I'm basically like fainting as I pretend to be cool and have a conversation about how he used Rosetta Stone to learn spanish and I tell him my major and stuff. So he sits down in first class and I turn around and say something like, "see ya!".
So the flight goes by and I just basically hyperventilate the whole time, and I get off and there's just massive amounts of people headed for customs. I get in the winding line and immediatly see Jason and his tour manager ahead of me facing the other direction. He stops and has paper ready to take down my name, and while it's happening people are passing me in line. He looks up and goes "why don't you get in line with us" and lifts up the little divider thing. SO by now I am like, wtf wtf wtf! We stood in line in customs for about 45 minutes while talking about everything from what I'm doing with my life to what book I'm reading, and I tell them that they really need to see Inglorious Basterds. He asked to see my passport to look at "all my stamps" and I tell him that I have none, and then he shows me his stuffed to the brim passport with stamps from 6 continents and his adorable picture from the year 2000. Obviously we talked about a bunch of other things but I feel that mentioning every subjuct covered might be a really boring for you.
My favorite part, though, was when he looked down and noticed my tattoo and goes "Nice tattoo". I start laughing and tell him I was waiting for him to notice and ask him if its creepy, to which he assures me that its not and that its actually really awesome. haha oh man, I thought I was going to die. He even said he likes the location because he never gets to see his (because its on his back)
When we were close to the end, he told me he wanted to write a story about me in his blog because he thought what I was doing with my life was really awesome. As you can guess, I had to pretend not to be thrilled beyond all reason as he "interviewed" me. He asked me what I was grateful for, and I seriously almost told him that I was grateful that the customs line was so long haha. Anyways, we got our bags after being stamped into Mexico, he takes my picture, we avoid the random bag search and walk out of customs. I saw my ride so I told him and he hugged me and said "see you in our travels abroad!".
That was the last I saw of him until his concert last night, where he/ his tour manager put us super close. Also, and I might have imagined this, but when he sang "you're the best, you're the best, you're the best, you're the best, you're the best definition of good intentions" in Dynamo, I swear he pointed and smiled right at me on the last 'you're the best'. Hahaha.

So that's my story. He hasn't posted a blog about me, but if he does I'll obviously put it here. And then I will be prepared to die because my life will have been completed. Whew. My heart started pounding again just writing that. And now I'm in Mexico City rubbing elbows with Ban Ki-Moon and submitting articles to potentially be posted on the real internet.
0

Destination: Mexico City

Basically....I'm SUPER excited.
A. I'm finally going abroad and
B. I'm going to a UNITED NATIONS conference! What??

So here are the basics. I was accepted into a program created by the conference that lets students attend the conference in hopes that they will be good journalists and spread the word about the event at their respective schools and communities. The conference is from September 9th through the 11th, and we get full press passes to all the speakers (Ban-Ki Moon!) and other parts of the conference. I put a link to it at the bottom of this page, so you can read all about it there, but basically the idea is to bring various NGOs (non-governmental organizations) together to figure out how to better spread peace and promote disarmament at the same time. In case you didn't know, this is everything I've ever been interested in. I am SO excited that I get to participate in a real-world UN event and see what I could potentially be doing with my life. Oh yeah, and go to the biggest city in all of North America and the 10th most populous city in the WORLD.

I'm leaving on Moday, September 7th and I'll be getting back in the wee hours of September 12th. As part of this program I'll be writing articles and taking pictures at the event so I'll definitely post those here, but I'm probably also going to write about every single other thing that happens because I'm just really excited about the whole thing. So that's about it! Besides this: Trabajemos por la Paz y el Desarrollo: ¡Desarme Ahora!